Sophie's slow-cookedRagu.

The pasta is the fresh egg pasta from my last film, so if you'd like to make your own, start there. Here's some I made earlier. Because it's so fresh it really doesn't take long to cook at all, and I always add butter. I love it.

Method:

1. Soak the porcini: Put the dried porcini in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave them to soak while you start the sauce. You will use the mushrooms and the liquid later.
2. Brown the mince: Season the pork mince with salt and pepper. Put a large pot on a medium to low heat with a good glug of olive oil and add the mince in handfuls. Don't break it up too much, you just want to get a little bit of brown on there. Gently turn it over as it begins to cook nicely. You don't need it cooked completely, otherwise it can start to go a bit dry. Lift it out with a slotted spoon and set it aside, leaving the pork fat in the pot.
3. Soften the vegetables: Lower the heat. Add all of your chopped vegetables and some butter to the pork fat and olive oil, and more pepper. Cook the onions slowly, sautéing until they go sort of translucent, and crumble in the dried thyme. Stir in the celery, leeks and carrots and keep it all on a low heat until it has softened down into a lovely mass.
4. Chop the lamb: While the vegetables soften, chop the roast lamb into relatively big chunks. It is going to cook very slowly, so it can stay chunky.
5. Mushrooms, garlic and chilli: Lift the soaked porcini out of their liquid, chop them and put them with the chopped button mushrooms. Add the garlic to the pot, then a little bit of chilli powder to warm it up, then all of the mushrooms. Let that cook for about five minutes so they all get to know each other.
6. In with the meat: In goes the mince and the lamb. Stir them through.
7. Wine, tomatoes and seasoning: Pour in a whole bottle of red wine. Add the bay leaves, the liquid from the porcini, a good squirt of tomato purée, the plum tomatoes and a few dashes of Lea & Perrins.
8. Reduce it right down: Let it bubble away for a couple of hours, coming back to check and stir it every ten minutes or so and breaking up the tomatoes as you go. It will really darken up as it reduces. Mine had been cooking for four and a half hours by the time it was ready, and it was a delicious, unctuous sauce. Taste it.
9. Finish the sauce: Chop the parsley and stir it in, with a bit more salt.
10. Cook the pasta: Drop the fresh pasta into boiling salted water. Because it is so fresh it really doesn't take long to cook at all. Drain it, melt some butter in the pan and toss the pasta back through it.
11. Serve: Pile the buttered pasta into a bowl, spoon the ragu over the top and finish with grated Parmesan and black pepper. Time to eat.

Serve with plenty of Parmesan and a glass of whatever was left in the bottle.