Calling culinary wizards

get it in the bin and start again!

Put some ouzo in it innit.

A knorr meat cube, quarter teaspoon of of marmite and five drops of tabasco

Try and drown out the flavour of the star anise with a good splash of Tobasco and a generous slosh of Worcestershire sauce, see how that goes.

Good call on the WS forgot that

Sprinkle some tobacco in it innit.

have a shi ite into it!....when you come to taste it...i would bet you wouldnt be thinking about the star anise!

make half into chilli con carne and they other half leave as asian bolognaise

I've got tabasco and WS in it...I got balsamic vinegar in there too...maybe I should w@nk into it...oh ffs I'm fooked here...very disapppointed

balsamic vinegar a bad move imho!

basalmic vinegar and star anise? Are you weird?

sometimes a small amount of honey/sugar can rescue if something is too spicy but i wouldnt say that star anise would make it too spicy!.....give it a whirl anyway!

Take the star anise out, add a little cumin, some chilli pwder, and some tinned kidney beans and call it chilli-con-carne instead.

Mind you if you've added all that other stuff, have a sandwich instead.

chuck some five spice in there and call it a stir fry

If you have some more pasta sauce you could drain what you have cooked in a collander, run it under the tap and start again with the cooked mince. Sounds extreme but it will work

It's not that it's spicy...it just has this off beat taste...it's not horrific but it's not what I expected...and u**ts**ging off balsamic vinegar can go and fvck yerselves...it's a fantastic ingredient in many dishes...I only banged it in this to try and rescue it....the coriander is next on the list of rescue ingredients.

chuck the missus in and call it a swimming pool!

honey or sugar will just make it sweet and spicy, cream/yoghurt/milk ease hot and spicy, but star anise isn't a hot spice anyway.

Dobbo, I'm a culinary wizard - I do stuff from scratch - no fvckin' pasta sauces out of a bottle here....

As above fry up a load of tomatoes and garlic and start again

as dobbo says.
Fry some Onion, add a little garlic, some basil, and maybe oregano, add tomatoes, W sauce, red wine, stock cube.
Seive the meat you've already cooked and chuck that in once the ingredients have cooked together for a while

if the odd taste is down to the aniseed flavour in the sauce from the star anise, you could add lots of oil to sauce, cook for 10 minutes, and then pour off the oil.

Dobbo I've had this batch on the go for nigh on 3 hrs now...I would rather kill myself than start afresh.

slinging the strained sauce you've already made down the sink.

good idea DStyle. that would take some of the other flavours away too tho, wouldn't it?

You cant change it by adding I dont think.You're ingredients are all wrong.The dish is tainted I reckon.

it would, but with the exception of the flavour of the animal fat, everything else can be replaced.

Three hours?How can it take three hours to cook pasta sauce?

that's about how long it should take to cook a good bolognese sauce

sigh I think I'm gonna have to just suffer through it and eat the fvcker as it is....it's not terrible by any stretch of the imagination but it's just not what I expected and I've cooked this sh!t many times before except that tonight I followed someone else's recipe (loosely). I could make it into a chilli in a heartbeat but we have a diner who can't be having really spicy stuff as she's jusat gad a baby....

DStyle knows ;-)

if u cant make a spag sauce then give up in the kitchen :)
or buy one in the jar

Stevie_P I would rather eat soil that buy that sh!t in a jar.

i use it now and then if just cooking for the kids :)
was cooking myself this weekend , getting into the indian take away.
made a nice bhuna today

Make your day a Dolmio day!

top man stevie...if u like cooking indian at home you might wanna go to this website...it's excellent...

http://www.indian-recipe.org/

cheers for that link.
im using this one , some good bases here.

http://cr0.co.uk/curry/index.php

did the curry get fixed? update please

ffs Billy, whilst I am bowled over by your genuine interest in the well being of my comestibles I have to ask - did u not read the thread properly ? ...it wasn't curry it was spaghetti sauce. Left it cooking for another hour and added a couple of herbs here and some more tomatoes there...it turned out ok in the end.

Sorry Swearbox - it was a real cliffhanger for a Sunday night chit chat thread

What will Swearbox end up doing to the sauce?
Will they still be able to taste star anise?
What is star anise anyway?
Will the lady with the baby enjoy the meal?

all this and more to be revealed on Monday ...