It seems looking back on it that this has been a quest of mine since my childhood. I never asked the Mourned Matriarch for her beef mince recipe because, well, you just assume it will always be there, on demand. That was a mistake. Hers had a mouth-widening silkiness from the combination of beef fat and olive oil that was the stuff childhood memories are made of.

Venison can’t give you that fat as it is very lean meat and too much olive oil trying to replace that fat can be detrimental to the overall flavour. Extra fat could be added and you can experiment with that if you want, but I will stick to this version which is a combination of Reinhold family meals and Angela Hartnet’s bolognese inherited from her ‘Nonna’. I later found out it isn’t far removed from Fergus Henderson’s beef mince and I too serve it sometimes on fried bread for a lovely combination of silkiness and crunch.

If you just need to get some goodness into the kids then its obvious mate is spaghetti or linguine. If you want to do that and also add a little adult sophistication, and perhaps offer a step up for the kids to push their taste buds into new territory, the addition of a Gremolata gives a brilliant, zesty freshness.

An old, rutted, Red stag from the hill in mid-October is going to taste like the gut bucket whatever you do to it, so avoid it. Muntjac is perfect, Fallow too (but again, avoid a rutted October buck), Roe would be a little gamier and the kids might not wolf it, it depends how hungry they are.

Ingredients

• Rape seed oil to brown the …

• 500g venison mince

• Olive to sweat the …

• 1 medium onion

• 2 carrots (or 1 large carrot)

• 1 stick of celery

• 1/2 a tube of tomato puree

• 2 cloves of garlic (3 if they are small, or a squeeze of garlic puree)

• 1 Knoor vegetable stock pot (or cube)

• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes

• 1/2 the above tin of water (conveniently rinsing it out at the same time)

• 2 bay leaves (3 if they are small; fresh or dried)

• The leaves of a few sprigs of rubbed fresh or dried thyme

• 1 good pinch of sugar (this matters to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar)

• 1 tbs of Worcestershire sauce (the background note of anchovy essence matters)

• A good splash (or 1 tbs if your prefer precision) of red wine vinegar (do not skip this bit - this matters to the overall roundness of the flavour)

• Salt & Pepper

I like to freeze my mince in a flat pack. These are then folded in half with species and date outwards. It saves on space in the freezer but it also defrosts so much faster as there is more surface area exposed and you can unfold it straight from the freezer to get the process started.

Heat some rape seed oil in a pan and get it spitting hot. Then brown the mince in batches of four. The rape seed oil gets to a higher temperature than the olive used later and is a neutral flavour. What we want is the mince to brown, not stew. If you find the mince is clumping to gather this is broken up most easily by rubbing the clumps between two wooden spatulas one with the slits in the blade.

De-glaze the pan with a splash of water after each batch, scraping the wooden spatula to get the flavourful brown bits off the bottom - you don’t want to burn them in the next batch. Reserve this water each time as it is full of Maillard flavour - you definitely want this is the finished product. It is not the same without it.

Finely chop the onion, celery and carrot. You can pulse it in a magi-mix if you want. In another pan (cast iron Le Creuset are perfect for this) heat a good couple of lugs of olive oil over a medium heat. Add the vegetables and sweat them for at least 10 minutes. Do not burn the onions - lower the heat and add more time if there is slightest risk. If it’s looking a little like it needs more gloss add a knob of butter. The add the tomatoe puree - it seems a lot but this will cook out and acts as a thickening agent. Then add the garlic - not before - you do not want this to burn - if it does it’s start again time.

After another 5 or 10 minutes this ‘soffritto’, the base for many good Italian sauces is your foundation to build on.

Toss in the vegetable stock pot; the tinned tomatoes (half fill the can with water and rinse it out into the sauce base); the bay leaves and thyme; the Worcestershire sauce, the red wine vinegar, reserved deglazing water and the browned mince. Season with salt and pepper. Bring up the temperature to a vigorous simmer stirring and then drop the heat down low and leave it for at least an hour, 2 would be fine but makes sure it doesn’t dry out completely.

You are not looking for a wet sauce but a thickened, meaty one packed full of vegetables that is going to hang onto your chosen pasta or not soak your fried bread before you got to crunch it.

If you can, leave it overnight for the next day. The flavours will meld and vastly improve. If you like you can lift the sauce the French way by adding another little splash of red wine vinegar at the end or when you re-heat - don’t go mad with this though.

If you are adding pasta - drain the pasta from the salted water you cooked it in and add a spoonful of sauce to it. Mix this thoroughly so each piece of pasta is wearing the sauce. Then the bulk of the sauce is spooned on top of it when you serve it.

The Gremolata

• A handful of fresh parsley

• The grated zest of a lemon

• A teaspoon of garlic puree

Chop the parsley finely, grate the lemon zest into it and add the garlic puree mix with a spatula or spoon. The Italians would of course use a whole garlic clove rather than puree but I find it far too powerful - puree gives the taste without the burn. Add a little olive oil to encourage the elements to get together. Add a teaspoon to the top of each portion of sauce - whether on pasta or on the mince in its splendid isolation atop a slice of fried gold.