Place a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan over a medium heat for 5 mins. Crush the Star Anise & bag it up in a square of muslin (I just chucked ’em in & removed them at the appropriate time). Add this to the pan, along with 25ml oil & the sliced onions. Cook for 20mins, or until the onoins are soft & caramelised, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

At the same time pre-heat another large, heavy-bottomed frying pan over a a low heat for 5 minutes. Mince the garlic. Pour 50ml of oil into the pan, then tip in the garlic, onions, carrots & celery & cook this soffritto over a medium-low heat for about 20min, or until the raw onion smell has gone. Transfer the soffritto to a bowl and wipe clean the pan. I needed to do this in batches given the quantity, size of my pan and heat available from my burners, just deglaze after each batch if you need to do this.

Place the pan over a high heat for 10mins. Pour 50ml olive oil & wait until it starts smoking: it must be hot enough so the meat browns rather than stews. Add the cubed pork and the minced oxtail. For the Meat, I replaced the Oxtail with ‘Mouse’s Ear’ a single muscle section from the gravy beef that my butcher, Brenta Meats, separated for me & I then finely diced. It’s a cheap cut, full of flavour and rewards long slow cooking. I also replaced the pork with my butchers excellent pork & veal mince. You might need to do this in multiple batches to ensure the meat is getting properly browned. Deglaze the pan with a slug of white wine between batches reducing it a little. Transfer the meat into a larger pot (in preparation for 8 hours of simmaring).

Remove the Star Anise from the caramelised onions, then tip them into the pot containing the meat. Add the remaining wine to the onion pan to deglaze it. Reduce the wine by half & pour it into the pot with the meat. Add the soffritto.

With the meat pot over a very low heat, pour in the milk and enough water to cover the mix and simmer very gently without a lif for 6hrs, stirring occasionally. Make sure the mix stays covered with liquid, adding water as necessary. The milk will go chunky but it doesn’t effect the final product.

Preparing the Tomato Compote

For the Compote I started with 1 and 1/2 litres of home made passata for a double batch, so used this as the base for the compote. I used about 2kg of saucing tomatoes sliced in half seasoned with salt and pepper and a little oregano with a Spanish Onion, a couple of cloves of garlic & a red capsicum, partially dried in an oven at 150 Degrees C for first 20 mins and 120 Degrees C for a further 30 mins, then passed through a sieve. The drying / cooking enrichens the passata, you can peel the skins away from the capsicum before passing through a sieve. I’m sure the Italian Mama’s would use a machine for the job or at least a Moulie food mill. Check out Kok Robins blog for details of making the Compote from scratch.

Like Kok Robin, any time it stated in the Recipe to use muslin for a spice mix going into liquid, I used a tea ball. It’s a lot easier than fluffing around with muslin. Local Chinese grocery stores usually stock these pretty cheap. Get as big a one as you can find or even a couple to allow you to spread the flavour through a big pot. Crush Corriander, Star Anise and cloves, placein a tea ball and this to a pot with the passata in it.

Add the Tabasco, Fish Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce, Tomato Ketchup and Sherry Vinegar. Drop in the Bouquet Garni and cook over a low heat for 2 hours. This mix of ingredients sounds over the top, but, they really add depth, savouriness and complexity to the sauce.

I skipped a step designed to add a roasted note (already achieved in making the passate) and extract a compote flavoured oil. Again – Check out Kok Robins blog for details of this step. The passate already had a roasted note from the slow cooking of the base ingredients in the oven.

Cooking the Spaghetti Bolognese

You’ll probably feel a little knackered by now, but, you’ll be on the home straight.

Add the tomato compote to the pot with the meat sauce in it & simmer over a very low heat for another 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Before taking the Bolognese sauce off the heat, check the seasoning & add some sherry vinegar (tasting as you go) to balance the richness of the sauce. Add a generous grating of Parmesan (taking care not to add too much as it can make the sauce overly salty & remove the sauce from the heat. Remove the original Bouquet Garni and Tea Ball of spices. Repalce these with the Tarragon Bouquet Garni, stir in 100g of unsalted butter & let it stand for 5 minutes. This last step adds richness with the butter & gives the sauce a fresh lift from the Tarragon Bouquet Garni.

Now to the pasta. Although I often make my own I went for dried Spaghetti from Martelli. Check out Martelli’s website for more. It’s an artisan pasta made in Lari, a small medieval village near Pisa. It is expensive at $13 a kilogram, but has an amazing texture and flavour, after all the effort making Heston’s sauce, it’s worth the expense! 100g of pasta per person in salted water. If you want to go the fancy presentation finsish check out Kok Robin’s blog. If not you can just present as you wish. I strain the pasta return to the pot & add sufficient sauce, giving it a toss through over the heat & then serve.