Coconut Bolognese with Lemongrass & Galangal

Over the past two months, I've had the privilege of exploring two of the most famous dishes from Southeast Asia, beef rangdang and coconut-based Thai curries. And through this process, I discovered one of the most versatile, powerful ingredients, thick coconut milk or coconut cream used in both the coconut-based Thai curries and beef rangdang. It has the ability to act as the cooking medium by providing the cooking oil. It makes a dish extremely rich and creamy, but not heavy. And when one chooses to, it provides an amazing nutty roasted coconut flavour, which was showcased beautifully in the original beef rangdang recipe. And through the journeys, I've also got to know a few of these vibrant Southeast Asian ingredients much better. The lemongrass, the galangal, the And I thought to myself, these ingredients combined are perfect for a meat sauce. So why not make one of my favourite dishes of all time, the ragu a la bolognese, but with some Southeast Asian flair. Let's do it. Like a real bolognese or a coconut-based Thai curry, we make our sofrito slash curry paste. And because we have so many ingredients today, we're simply going to enlist the help of a food processor. And we'll go from hard to soft. So first up, the lemongrass. As usual, whenever you use lemongrass, remove the tough outer leaves. We stop once we get to the green bits, but today we keep them because they go into the sauce in the beginning to infuse. Next up, galangal. As usual, it's important to remove the tough outer skin. Again, we keep the offcuts. A bit of ginger against the fibre. The garlic we'll crush later because I want the fresh, vibrant garlic taste. If we add it now, A, it will burn easier. B, all we get is the roasted sweet garlic flavours. Carrot. This, we just rely on the food processor. For me, this is always the hardest part of the bolognese when you do it by hand. A shallot. We're using banana shallot so it's a compromise between the two regions. Both this and the carrot would provide a wonderful sweetness that would balance the chilli. And later on, the fish sauce. And fish sauce really needs sweetness to balance. That's why sugar is so often used in Thai cooking. Two fresh chillies, one red, one green. And as usual, we remove the seeds because they add very little flavour. So if you want it spicier, add more chillies. By the way, if you have a very powerful food processor, you can probably skip the last three minutes of this video. Now, technology time. I always struggle to put the top on. If anyone has a tip, tell me in the comments. Perfect. A compromise between a sofrito and a paste and it smells amazing. Now, to this, we're going to add some coriander stalks. The next best thing to coriander roots, which is almost a mandatory ingredient in all Thai curry pastes. And it is for this reason I skipped the celery in the sofrito because they have overlapping flavour profiles. But this, given a long time to braise, would just add so much more depth. Even if you don't like coriander, give it a try because braised coriander is a completely different monster compared to the fresh one. And this, I don't like to put in the food processor. I feel it punches the cell walls a bit too much. So this much. Perfect. Let's split some coconut cream. So for those of you who are not familiar with randang or coconut-based curry, what we're trying to do is that we're trying to separate the fat from the solid through heat and in the process that will give us the cooking oil for the whole dish. The separated solids, which we will cook along our paste slash sofrito. So we bring in some heat. There we go. And this process takes a while. In fact, in most curry dishes, I find this is the hardest and longest part of the act of cooking. So take your time. Mother it. If at any point you worry that it's going to start to catch, add a tiny bit more coconut cream. Now you see the steam coming out, that's the water content from the coconut cream evaporating. And we want most of it to evaporate. Now, once there's not much steam coming out and your wrist can feel a bit of resistance, that's when you know you're ready for the sofrito slash paste. And because of the colour, it's very hard to see the oil floating. But once you add the paste, it will become much clearer. Perfect. Now we work everything in. And now you treat this just like a regular sofrito. You sweat it and you do it at gentle heat to evaporate the water content, to concentrate the flavours. We're not trying to brown anything, at least not yet. Oh, the smell of the lemongrass and the galangal is incredible. Once you start to hear a bit of a sizzle, that's when you know this is ready for the mince. Now, one optional step is to crush some garlic here at this stage. But because I want to maintain as much garlicky goodness as possible, I prefer adding it after the mince. But it's a personal choice. The later you add garlic to a dish, the more they taste like raw garlic. The earlier you add garlic, the more they taste like roasted garlic. So play around and see which side of the spectrum you land on. For us, we wait a bit, but the mince now goes in. Now, how much you want to brown your mince and how to brown your mince properly is a personal choice. In our actual bolognese, we demonstrated how to bake it in the oven. Today, we'll just keep it rustic and give it a bit of colour on the stovetop. It will give you a bit more of a bite, but that texture would go well with the flavour profiles of the ingredients that we're using. Now, after about 10 minutes of muttering and stirring, the beef has had its time to evaporate most of its water content. Its fat has now been rendered with the coconut fat and the smell is incredible. And that combined fat is now gently frying the combined mixture, browning it in the process, developing deeper flavours, causing the maillard reaction, which is what's going to make the meat taste meatier. And at this stage, I'd like to add the crushed garlic. Perfect. I will give the garlic a bit of time to evaporate its water content and brown slightly. Now, once this sizzling is becoming more intense, we introduce the umami bomb, tomato puree. Normally at this stage, I would also recommend salted anchovy puree, but today we have something even more powerful. We have the fish sauce later, which is the reason why we've not salted anything until this point, because just like the Thai curry, I want the fish sauce to be my sole source of salinity, giving us maximum umami and knowing the natural sugar content from all the combined aromatic vegetables and the strong, vibrant flavours of my other ingredients, I know this could stand up to the fish sauce. Now, once the sizzling sound is becoming stronger and the meat has taken on this beautiful golden brown colour, we switch once again back to the Italian influence. We add some cheap red wine. The wine part, not the cheap part, sorry. But please use cheap wine. They will taste exactly the same. Even red and white will taste exactly the same, but for a hint of colour. And whenever you use wine in a braise, it's extremely, extremely important to let it boil. A, to evaporate the alcohol, but B, to remove the excess acidity. We want acidity, but not harsh acidity. And I can tell you from experience, it takes about eight minutes. So now, once the wine has been reduced by half, we add some fresh tomatoes. Normally for bolognese, unless it's tomato season, I always recommend using tin tomatoes because they're always sweeter. But today, we actually want some acidity to balance the fish sauce and the strong flavours. So, just like a Thai beef salad, we have cherry tomatoes sliced in half. And of course, tomatoes are extremely rich in glutamic acid, once again reinforcing the umami of the dish. And we're adding these last minute because we want to maintain the acidity. Had we added from the beginning, most of the acidity would have been evaporated. If you really want to go the extra mile, you can remove the skin. But sometimes when they curl up in the sauce, I actually think they look quite nice. I'm also quite lazy. Now, we season and taste for the first time with our umami bomb, the Thai fish sauce. And bear in mind, this needs to reduce, so we can always add more at the end. It's better to be on the safe side. Everything in a good mix. How beautiful is that? And now, we add most of our kaffir lime leaves. Kaffir lime leaves, when they're cooked down, they initially become extremely tame. But given time, it will actually impart a lot of deeper flavours to the sauce, not dissimilar to a bay leaf. And as promised, lemongrass offcuts, galangal offcuts, not ginger offcut though. And now, you have one more choice to make. How thick or how rich do you want this sauce? If you want it very rich, top up with a bit more coconut milk. If you want it less rich, which is our choice, a bit of water, just to cover everything. Scrape the bottom of the pot one last time, in case there are any burn bits. Fond as they're full of flavours. Bring this back to a boil, lid on, and you let this simmer for at least an hour, up to three hours. If you have the time, even longer. It's not going to overcook, as long as you keep topping it up with water. So, after an hour or two, we'll come back and make some spaghetti. I'll see you then. Alright, after a bit more than an hour, this is what we have. As you can see, I cooked it with the lid on the whole time, so there was not much reduction. Because I want to show you how I like to finish most of my sauces. First up, we fish out the lemongrass offcuts. I normally skim off the excess fat of a lot of my recipes, but because this is beef fat emulsified with the coconut oil, we'll make an exception. And we add a very generous ladle of the sauce. A ladle or two. And here we have some boiling water, which we'll add to the pot. And we simply treat this as the cooking liquid for our spaghetti, or any other pasta you want to use. This will allow the starch content to release into the sauce, thus thickening the sauce, and for the sauce to better cling on to the surface of the pasta, giving the increased phase time together. It is how I like to cook almost all my meat sauces. And for meat sauces, I always, always prefer dry pasta, because it enables me to use this method. And you treat this like you would a risotto. You consult the packaging to find out how long does it take to cook them through. For the first half of that duration, as long as there's enough liquid, you can almost safely walk away. But for the second half, you stir vigorously to release the starch, but to prevent them from sticking together too much at the same time. So, a bit more water. You can add more cooking liquid as well, if you want a more intense flavour profile. Since it says 10 minutes on the packaging, I know for the first five minutes, I'm okay. Alright, after five minutes, that's when the real work begins. Continue topping it up, and we just picture ourselves making risotto. If you're using a high-grade spaghetti, by this point, the spaghetti should have taken on the colour of the sauce on the surface. But unfortunately, today we have a supermarket version. It'll still be tasty though. Now, taste. For me, we're approaching al dente, so all we need to do is reduce this down to the consistency that you desire. Perfect! Stove off, and one more finishing touch. Just like many Thai recipes, we introduce some lime juice at the very end to balance the strong and intense flavours, and to bring some brightness back to the dish. And now we can plate! Beautiful. Final finishing touch, some very, very thin, fresh kaffir lime leaves. Again, bring even more brightness to the dish. And the smell of this, even when you're just cutting the leaves, it's just incredible. Perfect. Extra lime on the side, and that's it! This is my spaghetti bolognese with Southeast Asian flair.