In case you didn’t know, May 2021 is our 60th birthday and we are going to be celebrating the fact long and hard. We have all kinds of exciting things happening through the rest of the year and we hope that you will want to party with us?

To kick things off here on the blog, we wanted to do something special. So we have decided to create a recipe series featuring recipes from our Mecca staff that you most definitely want to try yourself.

There will be 60 recipes in total (for each one of our birthdays), one per week on a Friday. So for the next year and 2 months, you KNOW this is your first port of call.

To start things off, we have our very own Catherine Warrilow up first with her family favourite , pasta sauce.

Catherine heads up the social and content team here at Mecca and juggles her daily work life with being a wife and mum to two young boys.

Catherine comments “It’s a family recipe that came to me from my mum. It’s been adapted over the years. A few new ingredients added by her, and the Cajun seasoning by me – it gives it a nice bit of smoky heat.”

So without further ado, here we go.

Catherine’s Wicked Pasta Sauce

Course: MainCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

35

minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tbs olive oil or sunflower oil

• 1 onion

• 2 garlic cloves/squeeze of garlic paste

• 2 tbsp tomato puree

• 1 tin chopped tomatoes

• 50ml red wine or red wine stock cube

• 1 beef stock cube

• 1 tbsp Henderson’s Relish or Worcester Sauce

• ½ tsp oregano

• 2 bay leaves

• ½ tsp basil

• ½ tsp parsley (or replace all herbs with 2 tsp mixed herbs)

• 1 tsp Cajun seasoning

• 1 tsp sugar

• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

• Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until browning
• Add the tomatoes, red wine and stock and on a medium heat, gently simmer for 5-10 minutes
• Add all remaining ingredients and simmer for a further 20 minutes
• You can add chicken, sausages or chopped vegetables as you like (add in at stage 3 if using)
• Serve with your favourite pasta and parmesan cheese.