Leftover roast beef with spaghetti and tomato sauce

Leftover roast beef with spaghetti and tomato sauce for want of a better name!

Last night I made dinner with a slow cook family roast (beef).  

Tonight I’m using some of the leftover meat with spaghetti and a tomato sauce.

Ingredients

• Leftover roast beef
• Spaghetti
• Iodised salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Cooking sherry
• Olive oil
• Butter
• White onion (diced)
• Garlic
• Red chilli flakes
• Mutti tomatoes
• Dried oregano
• Basil leaves
• Capers
• Black olives (pitted)
• Pickled jalapeño peppers (chopped)
• Spring onions (sliced)
• Provolone cheese (grated)
• Nutmeg
• Broccoli (steamed)

Instructions

Spaghetti

1. I cooked the spaghetti early in the afternoon to induce resistant starch production to improve my microbiota.
2. Bring some salted water to a rolling boil.
3. Add the dried spaghetti and cook for the time recommended on the packet.
4. Scoop about a cup of the starchy pasta water for adding to the tomato sauce.
5. Drain the spaghetti, and then put it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic film, and place it into the refrigerator.
6. When it’s time to reheat the spaghetti, remove the bowl from the fridge, remove the plastic film, and add the cold spaghetti to the developed tomato-based sauce.

Leftover roast beef

1. Remove one of the containers of leftover meat and choose one or two of the muscle bundles.
2. Cut the meat across the muscle bundle’s grain to ensure tenderness when you place your meat in your mouth. You’ll find because the beef was a slow cook family roast, the meat will lose its integrity when stirred through the tomato sauce. The loss of muscular cohesion is a good thing.

Tomato-based sauce

1. In a stainless steel skillet, gently sweat some onion, garlic, and red chilli flakes in butter and olive oil. I don’t like to aggressively sweat onion and garlic, because I don’t want the onion and garlic to impart a burnt flavour.
2. Turn up the heat to make some fond, i.e., the brown stuff that sticks to the pan’s bottom.
3. Deglaze the fond with some cooking sherry.
4. Add the tin of Mutti tomatoes and bring it to a simmer.
5. Add in the oregano leaves, basil leaves, capers, olives, and pickled jalapeño peppers.
6. Cook for a few minutes while everyone gets to know one another in the skillet.
7. It’s now time to put the cold spaghetti into the sauce.
8. Stir the spaghetti through so the sauce coats and adheres to the surface of the pasta.
9. Add in the slices of meat and stir through, so the skillet contents all get to know one another intimately.
10. Add in the saved cold pasta water to help thicken the sauce a little.
11. Turn off the heat and add a couple of nudges of butter and stir through.

Plating up

1. Transfer the skillet contents into a shallow bowl.
2. Add some grated provolone cheese.
3. Add some freshly grated nutmeg using a Microplane.
4. Serve the steamed broccolini as a side dish in the style of my BFF.

Final thoughts

1. How would you name this meal?
2. Did you know the brown stuff that forms on the bottom of a pan is called fond?

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