An excellent Sunday bolognese 🍝
Plus, a muesli bar to free up mornings
Hello,
What did you get up to in the first month of autumn?
I’ve been buying hot cross buns from my favourite bakery, puzzling over how much firewood to order for our first winter with a wood heater, and checking the family Whatsapp for any new pics of my brand new nephew!
This month’s edition is mostly about meals and snacks you can make in the oven, but let’s start with a recipe that’s perfect for Sunday afternoons.
🍅 Slow-cooked bolognese
I’ve tried a lot of bolognese recipes, from bulgogi-inspired to a multi-day lasagna bolognese. But this version, part of Bon Appetit’s Best series, is one I can see myself making all winter.
While it has a long cook time (up to three-and-a-half hours), it’s very low maintenance after the first 40 minutes. Plus, there are plenty of short cuts, like using a food processor to finely chop the veggie base.
I made this at the end of a very good Sunday — a warm day with waffles, a new book (Jessica Stanely’s first!) and a knitting project (which mostly involved watching a lot of DIY knitting videos and very little actual knitting).
I found this recipe via SJP’s Grub Street diet — it’s part of Matthew Broderick’s quest to find the best bolognese recipe 😂
Next time I’ll make a double batch so I can freeze some for our very first visitors. It’ll be such a cosy meal for people coming to stay.
🍗 Chicken, chorizo and chickpeas
I’ve made this chicken and chorizo tray bake twice in the last few weeks. It’s a Julia Busuttil Nishimura special that’s so easy to prepare, with all the ingredients easily found at the supermarket. Chickpeas, chorizo, cherry tomatoes and chicken marylands rubbed in paprika all roast on a tray together and that’s dinner!
I first made it for a friend who’d spent the day moving and cleaning his rental. Making food for other people usually makes me nervous (I always overthink it), but this was ideal and left plenty of time for chatting and cheese before dinner was ready.
🍚 Yes, you can make fried rice on a tray!
I made a lot of fried rice last month and while I often make it up as I go, I really like Hetty McKinnon’s version that bakes in the oven and lets you use whatever veggies you have in the fridge. The seasoning always reminds me of instant noodles.
Also unconventional and great, Molly Yeh’s all of the alliums fried rice, which starts by cooking leeks and any combo of onions in butter. Did anyone else grow up drawing smiley faces on their fried rice with a bottle of tomato sauce? This fried rice is served with a delicious combo of kewpie mayo and sriracha.
🍯 Homemade honey muesli bars save the day
The very first thing I baked in our new house was a batch of honey and seed muesli bars by Heidi Sze, and they made my kitchen smell so nice.
Aside from being delicious, having breakfast sorted gave me more time for fun things on weekday mornings, like a walk with a friend on the phone or time to go out for coffee before work.
Because we’re a house of two, I froze some of the batch which helped them last the month.
🥞 Other nice things
I was in Sydney for a night and went to A.P Bakery and got this giant pancake! I loved the rooftop setting and want to go back to try all of the pastries. Shout out to Sophie & Sophie of Highly Enthused who never lead me astray.
Hetty McKinnon’s veggie newsletter is back, with a very delicious looking gochujang mushroom udon.
The Dead Eyes podcast has been keeping me company in the kitchen and on walks this month. It’s a funny podcast about rejection, disappointment and Tom Hanks. I’m also loving See Also, a new weekly Australian pop culture podcast, which reminds me of two of my faves — Highly Enthused and The High Low.
The Tasmanian Easter eggs I’m buying this year.
And for anyone keen to make their own hot cross buns, my favourite recipe is from The Cook & Baker cookbook. Just make sure to only mix the dough on a low setting of your stand mixer — I learnt this one the hard way.
Or if you prefer a brioche-style hot cross bun, make this recipe.
Catch you next month!
P.S You can now read To All the Recipes I've Loved Before in the new Substack app.
