This is an easy, warming soup which uses up a bunch of lonely beetroot from the bottom drawer of the frdge. It was inspired by a recipe in the new HFW book "River Cottage Veg Everyday", but I pretty much completely changed the character of it based on what I had available.
Roast your beetroots with a few garlic cloves in the oven at 180 for about 45 mins to an hour, coated in oil and alongside some thyme leaves, a bay leaf, salt, pepper and a slosh of water. When ready, skin them and chop into smallish pieces.
Fry up an onion in a saucepan until soft, then add the beetroot and a pint (500ml) of stock. Bring up to a boil and then keep at a simmer on a low heat for ten minutes or so.
Season well with salt and pepper, then with a small dash of worcestershire sauce *, a squirt of lemon juice and a generous drizzle of balsamic vinegar. If the brew still tastes "unfinished", try a small blob of redcurrant jelly - it worked for me.
Shove the lot into a blender and process until smooth. Pour into bowls and finish with a swirl of cream and some fresh chopped parsley.
* btw, in case you didn't know, you can now get vegetarian worcestershire sauce if you are so inclined. I found this one on the internet, but am sure I also saw one in Waitrose the other day.
Even my Dad eats this and he usually hates bread sauce. For me, a roast dinner isn't complete without it and I certainly wouldn't be happy if christmas dinner didn't include it. The trick is to leave the milk to infuse for a very long time.
Pop a pint of milk (about 500ml) into a saucepan with a small, halved onion (or two quarters of a large one) with a clove pushed into each peice. Add a bay leaf, a peice of mace and a few white peppercorns. Put on the heat and bring almost to a boil, but not to boiling point. When you see bubbles starting take it off the heat and leave. Just leave it alone, for hours.
Strain the milk into a bowl full of torn bread, preferably a bit stale. The best part of half a loaf will do the trick, just remember to take off the crusts. Pop in the fridge and leave until you are almost ready to eat it.
When you're ready, decant the milky bready mixture back into a saucepan with several knobs of butter and a splosh of double cream. Heat up gently and season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg. Delicious.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
I make my own pasta fairly regularly these days, the general method I use can be found here.
A quick refresher though: 100g flour and 1 egg per portion, mixed together with a pinch of salt, kneaded for 10 minutes and rested in the fridge for about half an hour. Roll it out really flat and cut into the shape you want, using a pasta machine if you have one. I started using semolina flour to coat the pasta to stop it sticking together and it works much better than ordinary flour does.
So, assuming you've made (or bought) your spaghetti you can turn your attention to the sauce, which is really simple but very tasty. If you don't fancy this sauce, you can find other recipes by doing a search for "pasta sauce" (which shows a list of links) or clicking here to display posts in chronological order.
First of all fry up a sliced purple onion and some garlic, then add in some thick cut bacon or lardons. When the bacon is pretty much cooked add in the mushrooms and cook through. Right at the end, stir in a little cream, the juice of half a lemon, lots grated parmesan and finely chopped parsley. Season with lots of pepper and a pinch of salt. Easy peasy!
I got stuck in rotten traffic on the way home from work the other night, bored and hungry, for almost an hour and a half (I only live 4 miles from my office!). My lovely hubby asked me if there was anything he could do to get dinner underway and I jokingly replied "make the pasta!". I was pleasantly surprised when he said "ok... how?" and so promptly referred him to my Pastalicious blog post.
What a hero! By the time I got in the door, the pasta dough was resting in the fridge and he was busy clearing up the work surface. He'd never made pasta dough before and it was delicious, which goes to show that it is worth giving it a go! He made 300g flour / 3 eggs which, with other ingredients, will easily feed four.
I rolled the dough out and turned half of it into spaghetti for dinner, and half into tagliatelle to store for later in the week. The tagliatelli just had to be hung out to dry for a few hours and then stored flat on a tray with semolina.
The sauce was an easy one. Firstly, we boiled the broad beans, shelled them and set them to one side. Then we pan fried a couple of thinly sliced purple onions, three smashed cloves of garlic and one deseeded red chilli until they went soft. Then I melted a big knob of butter into the mix and added a couple of sliced courgettes and cooked them until almost done.
Finally, a glug of single cream, a handful of freshly grated parmesan, the broad beans, a squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper and chopped parsley. The spaghetti cooked through in about 3 minutes and I just lifted the pasta straight out of the water and into the sauce, ready to be served. Yum, yum, yum!
Having been a little kitchen crazy recently, I fancied a little break tonight. I made a classic throw-together dinner - few of the ingredients are essential, it can be made with a lot of vegetables that might be in the fridge or freezer and pretty much anything else you have lying around.
I still had the farfalle that I made a while ago, using leftover pasta from the cannelloni, along with some aubergine, leftover from the kibbi. There was also a red pepper, some mushrooms, fresh parsley and oregano, a heel of parmesan, plus I've always got onions and garlic.
I also had a little bit of cream and lemons left from making the lemon tart. With a small pack of thick-cut bacon and some peas from the freezer, this all added up to the makings of a lovely, easy supper.
After chopping the veg, I put the pasta into a pan of boiling, salted water. Then fried the bacon up with the garlic and onions. When pretty much cooked I added in the aubergine, a sprinkling of dried chilli and a few spoonfuls of the pasta water to stop everything sticking. After a few minutes more, the pepper and mushrooms. When everything was cooked, I added the lemon juice and stirred it through before adding the cream, herbs, grated parmesan, salt and pepper.
I drained and sitrred the pasta into the sauce, along with another couple of spoons of the water.
This kind of meal can be made with stock or tomatoes if you don't have any cream and any of the vegetables could be substituted for something else; the base is just pasta, garlic and onion.
The real point of it is that you can make a filling, interesting pasta sauce out of whatever you have in the kitchen; it'll taste better and be better for you than any pre-made jar and takes zero time to do. I think I spent longer writing the four paragraphs in this post than I did cooking it...
The components of Random Pasta Sauce:
1. Liquid: cream, stock, water, tinned tomatoes, passata etc.
2. Alliums: garlic and onions of any kind, even leeks and spring onions can work.
3. Umami: cheese, cured meat, fish, shellfish, tomatoes and mushrooms all give a robust savoury flavour.
4. Vitamins: I usually aim to include at least three different types of veg, to ensure variety in the look, taste and texture.
5. Acidity: lemon juice, vinegar, wine, vodka etc.
6. Seasoning: salt, pepper, fresh or dried herbs, chillies etc.
I had some blueberries delivered on Friday, I was intending to eat them as they are but, when I was in the supermarket earlier due to cat food and shampoo shortages, I walked past some Spanish nectarines and had a sudden craving.
I'm sure I've seen Nigella make a fruit tart with blueberries and nectarines before, and I decided this was exactly what I wanted to eat tonight.
I picked up three nectarines and some pre-made puff pastry (super-laze), knowing I already had cream and sugar at home. There is definitely a gap in the market for organic pre-made pastry, not even waitrose sell any.
Rolled out the pastry and scored a border, covered it with thinly sliced nectarines, topped with the blueberries and lots of muscovado sugar. Baked it in the oven at 220 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
I cut us a huuuuge slice each, covered them with double cream, ate the lot, felt deliciously fat and fell asleep on the sofa. Aaah, bank holiday weekend.
My husband was out last night: fleeing to a friend's house to watch the apprentice as I absolutely hate it! He was also going to get an Aroma, which is possibly the best kebab in the world, without me. Damn.
Again the thought of an easy takeaway floated through my mind, before I remembered that we're going for a Chinese dinner with his parents on Sunday. So, a quick scrabble about in the fridge and I came up with this comforting dinner.
The concept is inspired by something I saw Nigella cook once, she used cream, egg and white truffle oil for a pasta sauce. Genius.
I haven't used particularly fancy pasta: I like the tricolore because it's so pretty, but homemade this is not. Get it on to boil first, as the sauce doesn't take long to make.
Heat up a pan and add some thick cut bacon or pancetta. Once mostly cooked, add a diced stick of celery, a sliced purple onion and some thinly sliced mushrooms.
In a separate bowl, beat a raw egg with cream, white truffle oil, lots of pepper and salt, and some grated pecorino (or parmesan, or hard cheese of any kind really).
Once the pasta is cooked and drained, dump it in the pan with the vegetables, turn off the heat, and stir in the sauce. It's lovely. It's quick. And it's a little bit naughty.
