Although this blog is a tad off the subject of engineering, cooking is still a passion of many men. I hope this interests and/or helps you as much as my other blogs have done and to all the single, working dads out there im with you!

I am a father of three; I do the dusting, clean the bogs, gardening, allotment, winemaking, model engineering, vacuuming, laundry, sculpting and work, which I love. Cooking is a passion but also a necessity particularly when you are cooking for guests and his 3 kids who hate vegetables.

My kids love vegetables as they have had no choice from a very young age, they have live off of the allotment i.e. string beans that are like bootlaces you can chew them for ages, cabbages that have caught excruciating frost and become all slimy on the outside, but lovely in the middle, one out of ten spuds that haven’t been blighted.

Veg is good for your guts like the Yacult yogurt drink. It makes you squirt a mud pool.

I digress, I have found a way of disguising veg by chopping them very small, when I say small I don’t mean liquidising, it won’t work in this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 kilo of lean minced beef
• 2 chopped carrots
• 1 green pepper chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic crushed
• 1 medium onion chopped course
• 4 teaspoons of beef gravy granules (Bisto)
• 1 teaspoon of sun dried tomato paste
• 1 courgette chopped course
• 5 medium mushrooms
• 1 teaspoon of fish oil
• 250g of whole grain spaghetti (broken in half)

Method

The veg needs to be cut about 6mm square diced as they break down during cooking.

Take one kilo of lean minced beef or the cheap stuff which you will need to boil off the fat. Brown it in the pan with 4 table spoons of olive oil, olive oil makes for easy going in the morning.

Keep the beef sizzling in the pan and add your finely chopped veg, 2 carrots, 1 green pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 onion and 4 teaspoons of beef gravy granules, just sprinkle the gravy granules in dry. Add 1 teaspoon of sun dried tomato paste; don’t use ordinary paste as sun dried has a more intense flavour.

Keep the pan on a medium heat as you started. Now add a little water, about 1/8of a cup or so, don’t add too much as you don’t want the final dish to be sloppy.

Coarsely chop 1 courgette, you can peel it if you like as the kids may see the green, AGHH, Vegetables!!! Chop 5 mushrooms finely or 10 little ones. Now add 1 teaspoon of fish oil or salt, fish oil is now readily available from all supermarkets and I find it has a more subtle salty taste than the taste of harsh salt.

Next is to simmer on a low heat until the courgettes are just soft.

While simmering, get 500g whole grain brown spaghetti, not the white stuff, take out half of the packet and break it in half. Boil the spaghetti with 3 tablespoons of sea salt, sea salt contains iodine and is subtle in flavour. You don’t want to make the dish too salty.

Boil the spaghetti until there is only a little water left in the pan as you don’t want to drain it, brown or whole grain soaks up a lot of water. Take the spaghetti off the heat and add to the simmering vegetable and meat mixture.

Turn off the gas and mix together. Add a little ordinary salt, if needed, and serve.

This meal feeds four people and its proven vegetable haters love it!

The recipe sounds a bit long winded but you can’t go wrong as nothing burns, it’s a very forgiving recipe that takes 25 minutes.