Kidney Bolognaise...mmm delicious?

I have accidentally invented a new classic dish: Kidney bolognaise.


This came about as a result of an error made by the muppet doing the grocery shopping (i.e. me) who was unable to ask for "mince" in Swahili. I therefore got what looked like diced steak, because as it transpired, the butchers didn't have a mincer. I stood there, the wally I am, watching them hack a lump off the dead cow strung up in the shop window and chop it up for me, wondering if it was going to turn into mince at any point. It was then wrapped in newspaper and handed to me; no such luck.


I resolved to cut all the meat up into small parts so as to look like mince and compensate for my mistake. This worked very well for all the parts that didn't have bones in.


While cooking it dawned on me that my 'diced steak' may have more than diced steak in it (ie kidney). It's the smell of it that gave them away. I don't actually like kidney (apparently this is typical white person behaviour, we're not keen on innards) and as a result I wasn't prepared to taste test my creation until I was jolly sure it would taste nice. Instead I gauged the taste of my dish by smell.


Unsurprisingly, the smell caused me to believe that it didn't taste like spag bol should and so I put a WHOLE BULB of garlic in to compensate. After that I felt brave enough to give it an actual taste and found that it tasted powerfully of garlic. Caw!! So I added some extra tomatoes to dilute the flavour and hoped for the best.


I presented this dish to my family as a cross between Kenyan and Italian cuisine. A "sort of spag bol". A nice compromise. I didn't enjoy it myself because of the kidneys but Georgina (my Kenyan sister) loved it and resolved to cook it at all sorts of future events such as birthdays. So in many ways my odd creation was a success.