What can I do with Ground Beef

After I had Jamie's book : Jamie's Food Revolution, I couldn't help it but wanted to try everything on it. Problem was, I had limited budget so I needed to choose carefully what I wanted to try. Instinctively I wanted to try all those dishes with meat (I just love meat so damn much), but a chunk of tenderloin costs about 40.000 - 50.000 Rupiah and it just serves one. So I decided to try something with ground beef. I bought half a kilo of ground beef for 50.000 rupiah and decided to use half of it to make Bolognese sauce. 

Bolognese Sauce, adapted from Jamie's Food Revolution cookbook.

Homely Ground Beef : Bolognese Sauce ( p. 165)

Result : I felt proud I actually made this famous sauce from scratch, not the ready-to-eat in the supermarket! But, I added too much tomato puree so the beef's flavor didn't really come out. Probably because I was too cheap, I supposed to use 1/2 kg of ground beef, but instead I only used 1/4 kg. 

It was still okay though, not like a big disaster. From the leftover I made Lasagne and oh it was amazing. But I was unsure was the amazing feeling came because I was proud I can actually cooked lasagne or was it because it was actually good. Hendra said that it still tasted too tomato-ey, but my Dad, bless him, said it was great. I think half of the great comment came because he was bewildered to see me in the kitchen. 

Anyway, I've tried to find the link to the Bolognese sauce recipe in Jamie's site but I couldn't find it, I found another in Simply Recipes, just click it. I haven't tried that one but when I read through it, the basics are almost the same, only it used more complicated ingredients. I really wanted to try it too. 

By the way, if you just happen to learn to cook like me and if you want to spend your money on a really good cookbook that teaches lots of basics, try Jamie's. I love it. It has detailed step-by-step instructions with picture during the cooking process, so you have ideas what the food's gonna look like during the cooking. Plus some of the recipes have the how-to video on his website. 

Something new I learned : 

1. don't be cheap with beef
2. 1/4 kg of ground beef only needs 1/2 can of tomato puree
3. Basil is kemangi in Bahasa Indonesia
4. The stalks are the important part in herbs. 
5. When pasta is cooked, drizzle some oil olive to avoid it to get sticky.