Ragú with Mushrooms and Wild Greens is a traditional British recipe for a classic pasta sauce made with an onion, carrot, pork, beef, mushroom and wild greens base in tomato sauce. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic British version of: Ragú with Mushrooms and Wild Greens.
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It was a sunny November morning and I wanted to pop out and perform a final forage of the year. So I looked in the fridge and saw I had carrots, onions and a pack of button mushrooms. With minced beef and pork in the freezer and passata in the store cupboard I thought I could make a large batch of ragú flavoured with wild greens that could then be turned into a chili con carne with the addition of red kidney beans and then into a curry. So I would have food for a week that I could vary as the week progressed. Wild salad burnet grows profusely near where I live and this time of year it's leggy and very tender. Not particularly flavoursome, but great for chopping. A mild autumn also meant that wild water mint and escaped garden mint was still available. I'd also found a wild bay tree as a garden escapee.
Ingredients:
200g minced beef
200g minced pork
150g button mushrooms, chopped
2 medium carrots, diced
2 medium onions, peeled and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
500ml passata
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 bayleaves
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp water mint, finely chopped
1 tbsp mint, finely chopped
colander full of garlic mustard leaves, finely shredded
1 bunch wild salad burnet leaves, finely chopped
salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
Method:
Set a large frying pan over medium high heat. Crumble in the pork and beef and fry until the meat is nicely browned and any clumps have been broken.
Use a slotted spoon to transfer the meat to a slow cooker, leaving any excess fat behind. Pour off and reserve half the fat then put the frying pan back on the heat and use to fry the onions and carrots for about 6 minutes until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes then add the vegetables to the meat in the slow cooker.
Set the pan back on the heat, add in the remaining reserved meat fat and use to fry the mushrooms until they release their excess liquid and this has evaporated away.
Turn the mushrooms into your slow cooker then add in all the remaining ingredients.
Cook on high for 2 hours. Near the end of the cooking time taste the ragú and adjust the seasoning with salt and freshly-ground black pepper. Serve on a bed of pasta (I used linguine in this instance).
If desired you can serve garnished with finely-grated parmesan cheese.
