Kinda Carbonara

This isn't really carbonara in the truest sense, it's a carbonara inspired leftover-ham-dinner, it was pretty tasty though.

The sauce is dead simple, you just need some kind of cured pork like ham or bacon for the main flavour. I used a few slices from the Christmas ham, which is still good for the moment but is probably on its last legs so it needs using up.

Fry up a little garlic and thinly sliced purple onion with a finely diced red chilli. When soft add in thickly sliced mushrooms and the pork, let them cook through.

 
Add the juice of half a lemon and a good sized slosh of single cream. Season with lots of black pepper and chopped parsley then serve mixed in with some lovely fresh pasta. Doddle.

 

Runner Bean & Fennel Seed Pasta Bake

I got the inspiration for this from Abel & Cole's cookbook, but as usual I corrupted it to fit my needs. Sadly, my poor pasta machine has broken so my plans of serving the sauce with fresh egg pasta was scuppered. Instead I was stuck with a packet of pre-made semolina shapes, which usually work best in bakes (mind you, that's just my opinion).

The first thing is to make the bechamel which is easy: warm up half a pint of milk with some bay leaves, peppercorns, mace (or nutmeg), a bit of onion and some parsley stalks - I've actually run out of parsley so I omitted them this time. Once the milk is hot to the touch, but not boiling, take it off the heat, strain into a jug and allow it to cool a little.

Finally, heat up 25g of flour and 25g of butter, constantly stirring. Once you have a roux, take it off the heat and slowly mix in the flavoured milk.Once you have mixed everything in together, put it back on the heat and stir until thickened.

Pre-cook the runners, after destringing and cutting them into small peices. Heat up some olive oil in a saucepan and add a few smashed cloves of garlic, a chopped onion, a sprinkle of chilli flakes and about 1/2 a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Give them a minute or so, then add a tin of tomatoes, a glug of red wine, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. Allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes while you cook 175g of dried pasta.

Drain the cooked pasta and mix the tomato sauce and runners in, along with a handful of torn basil. Decant this mixture into oven safe dishes, you can do it all in a single dish or split it into two or three smaller ones.

Spoon the bechamel over the top and dot with peices of mozzarella. Top with a light grating of parmesan and a grinding of pepper. Bake at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Spaghetti with Broad Beans & Courgettes

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!

White Truffle Tricolore

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.

Pastalicious

Being of partly Italian descent I felt quite ashamed when I hit my late twenties and realised I still didn't know how to make fresh pasta. Then, one birthday, I was given a pasta machine...

Delicious dinners plus absolute disasters ensued. That pasta machine was the target of so much abuse before it finally gave up the ghost, with a last ditch attempt to poison us by shedding metal from its gears into the dough. Yum.
I didn't make pasta from scratch again for a couple of years, it just seemed like too much aggro when perfectly delicious dried pasta was available in the shops. The texture isn't quite the same but dried pasta is wonderful enough and doesn't cause stress spikes in your blood pressure.

I did eventually get another pasta machine though and, with some trepidation, set out to make my own once again.

Pasta is honestly easy to make and absolutely delicious

It's a funny thing, a bit like the gardening, somehow everything just clicked into place. Now whether that's just because I had a bit more general cooking experience or because the new pasta machine isn't harbouring a grudge, or maybe just that I'm less stressed out and happier these days, I've no idea. All I know, is that I do now understand how easy pasta is to make and can't really recall what it was that made it so stressful before.

The ratios I use are about 100g flour to 1 egg, with the average batch being 400g/4 for 2 people to have both dinner and a lunchbox the following day. So, that's 100g/1 per portion or, if you're feeling lazy, just use a teacup to scoop out the flour, you can always add a little water if the mixture turns out a bit dry. Strong bread flour seems to work fine for me but the extra finely ground tipo 00 is the easiest to knead.

Stick the flour into a mixing bowl with a big pinch of salt, crack the eggs directly into the center of the flour and start to combine. It'll turn into a lovely yellowish dough which needs kneading, just like bread, for about 10 minutes. Then wrap it in clingfilm and leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour, preferably for an hour, and no longer than a day.

After it's chilled out for a while, pull it out of the fridge and tear off half or a quarter of the dough (depending on how much you made) and flatten it out on the worksurface with your hands.

Put the pasta machine onto it's widest setting, mine runs from stages 1-7, that probably refers to a measurement of some sort but I've no idea what.

Give the pasta a thin coat of flour and then run it through the machine, put the setting up one and run the pasta through it again, continually flouring at any sign of stickiness. By about stage 4 or 5, cut the strip of pasta in half and keep going. I never take it to stage 7 (the thinnest setting), as I think stage 6 works best. Stage 7 would be good for pressing herbs or flowers between sheets of pasta, I think I saw Jamie Oliver demo that.

Depending on what you want to make, once a strip of pasta is ready you can either run it through the spaghetti or tagliatelli rollers, cut it into papardalle with a knife, or look at making shapes from it - fusilli, farfalle etc.

The most common shape I make is tagliatelli, although today I made lazy pasta - strips of pasta that look like they've been cut by a drunk six year old.
No matter what you make, the one thing I've learned the hard way is that you need to keep pasta floured and don't leave it sitting in a pile for too long or it'll stick together and be a disaster. Make sure all the peices have a thin, floury coat and every now and again toss them about to get air in between them and stop any sticky bits from getting settled.

Whatever you do, don't lay peices of pasta on top of each other to store them. They need to be stashed individually with air all around them. I once stayed up until 2am making tortellini only to come down in the morning and find a dish of squish, completely unrescuable. I haven't made tortellini since as it was an utterly depressing sight, so ignore the above advice at your peril!

Repeat until all the dough is used up and ready to cook. Get a huge pan of water on the boil: whichever saucepan you were thinking of using, use one at least a size larger than that. I used to think this was overkill and unnecessary, it isn't though. Without lots of space for the pasta to swirl around in, it does tend to get stuck together and you can end up with clumps of uncooked bits. Don't bother adding oil to the water, greasy pasta is horrible, just use a big enough pan.
Add a huge pinch of salt to the water, it makes a big difference to how great the pasta tastes.

We're talking just a few minutes before it's ready, it'll float to the top when it is but always do the taste test anyway or you won't get it just the way you like it.
Drain it in a colander but keep a bit of the water left over in the pan too. Add your sauce, mix it up and serve.

The Sauce
Today I made a ricotta and green things sauce. I sauteed up some garlic, onions and celery, added frozen spinach and peas, then some sliced courgettes and finally a pot of ricotta. Salt, pepper, chopped mint, the juice of half a lemon and it's ready to go (don't forget the cup of water left in with the pasta, this provides a bit of liquid for the sauce and the starch, so I'm told, helps it adhere to the pasta).

One final thing, grate a little parmesan over the top. Fabulous!