Food

Ragu bolognese (aka spag bol)

thesamovar — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:56:37 +0000

Origin: Marcella Hazan

Serves 6

oil
45 butter
85g onion, chopped
3 sticks celery, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
350g minced beef
250ml full fat milk
whole nutmeg
250ml dry white wine
500g tin tomatoes

And to serve it with:

tagliatelle
parmesan

Heat oil and butter and soften the onion. Add celery and carrot and cook for 2 mins. Add the meat, some salt and pepper and cook until it has lost its raw red colour. Add the milk and simmer gently until it has bubbled away. Add 1/8 tsp nutmeg. Add the wine and simmer away until it has evaporated. Add the tomatoes and just barely simmer for at least 3 hours (Heston Blumenthal suggests 5-7 hours), stirring occasionally. You'll probably have to add water occasionally if it gets too dry. At the end, there should be no water left - no loose liquid. Serve with tagliatelle and plenty of parmesan.

Chestnut and chorizo soup

thesamovar — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:48:35 +0000

Origin: Moro cookbook

Served 4

oil
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stick, diced
2 tomatoes
120g mild cooking chorizo cut into small cubes
2 garlic cloves thinly sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1.5 teaspoons finely chopped thyme
2 small dried red chillies, crushed
500g cooked peeled chestnuts
20 saffron threads infused in boiling water
1 litre water
S+P

In a large pan, heat oil. Add onion, carrot, celery, chorizo and some salt and fry for about 20 mins until everything caramelises and turns brown. Add garlic, cumin, thyme, chilli and cook for 1 min. Add tomato and after 2 mins the chestnuts. Add the saffron liquid and water and bring to boil - simmer for 10 mins. Roughly blend and season.

Pesto

thesamovar — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:27:33 +0100

Ingredients (for 2)

80g basil leaves, removed from the stalks and carefully washed and squeezed dry
1-3 garlic cloves, peeled
2-3 tbsp pine nuts
6 tbsp olive oil
40-80g pecorino or parmesan, or a mixture of the two (use sardo, a Sardinian ewe’s milk cheese for maximal authenticity), grated
Salt and pepper

Blend the basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, salt and pepper to a rough puree. Stir in the cheese. Add a few tbsp of the boiling pasta water just before draining and mixing them together to loosen it up a bit.

Aubergine and mozarella pasta sauce

thesamovar — Wed, 16 May 2007 19:31:53 +0100

Origin: The recipe below is mine, but adapted from three recipes. One is from the recipe book of the Walnut Tree Inn, from back when it was an excellent and highly regarded Italian restaurant, another from the River Cafe cook book, and the last is from Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking. I highly recommend all three.

Ingredients (for 2 hungry people)

250g pasta - fettucine or other flat pasta is good, wholewheat works well
1 aubergine, halved lengthwise and very thinly sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
1-2 chillis or dried chilli flakes (these work really well actually)
1 tin tomatoes, or equivalent amount of chopped fresh tomato
Parmesan
Olive oil, quite a lot
Salt, pepper
Optional: fresh basil or coriander
Optional: 1 ball of mozzarella, preferably buffalo mozzarella, torn or chopped into bite sized pieces

In a large saucepan heat the olive oil. The amount you use is at your discretion. At the very least, you need a good covering of the base of your pan, but considerably more is preferable. The reason is that later on the aubergine will soak a lot of it up. This is a good thing and a bad thing - it’s good because it’s delicious, but it’s bad because you run the risk of burning the aubergine if you’re not careful. More on that in a moment.

Soften the finely chopped onion in the oil. Now add the thinly sliced aubergine. It’s important to make these slices as thin as you can be bothered. I usually go for about pound coin thickness as a trade-off between effort and reward. At this point, you can also add the chilli or flakes. Cover this pan and cook, occasionally uncovering and stirring so it doesn’t stick and burn. You need to keep cooking until the aubergine is soft enough to eat. Taste it to check when you reach this point - it’s always important to do this at every stage of cooking anything actually.

Now add the tomatoes, turn up the heat and reduce until the sauce is thick and there is no loose liquid in the pan, but no further than this. Season to taste. Take it off the heat and add the herbs and cheeses and stir them in. Mix with the pasta and serve. You may have difficulty with the melted mozzarella going everywhere, but it’s all part of the fun.

Pheasant, chestnut and pancetta stew

thesamovar — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:58:49 +0000

Origin: Moro cookbook

This is how I remember a recipe I cooked from the Moro cookbook. It's roughly right, and it worked fine cooked like this.

Ingredients

For two large portions

2 pheasant pieces (chicken, guinea fowl etc. will do)
200g chestnuts (vacuum packed is fine)
100g pancetta thinly sliced (or bacon)
Small glass of white wine (vermouth works OK)
Onion, finely chopped
Carrot, finely chopped
Tin of tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 pieces cinnamon
3 cloves, ground
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
A small number of coriander seeds
Rice
Olive oil, salt, pepper

Heat some oil in a large pan or casserole and brown the bird pieces at a high heat. Set aside.

Fry the pancetta until it begins to crisp. Add the onion and carrot and sweat until soft. Add the garlic, cinnamon, cloves, paprika and bay leaves, stir and cook for a minute. Add the chestnuts, stir and cook for a minute. Add the wine boil it for a few minutes.

Add the tomatoes and bird pieces and simmer until they are done. About 20 mins for breasts or up to 40 mins for legs. Depending on how long you are planning to cook it you should cover the pan or not. You want the sauce to have just a tiny amount of loose liquid so that it's mostly thick but not dry. Check for seasoning.

Meanwhile, boil your rice and put the coriander seeds in with it. As you eat the rice, you will occasionally crunch on one of the seeds and get a 'flavour burst'.

Jambalaya

thesamovar — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:40:16 +0000

Origin: Alastair Fletcher

Alastair likes to be... efficient in his communications, so here is his jambalaya recipe in full:

Chorizo, red onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, celery, various peppers, chicken, prawns, tomatoes, smoked paprika, port. Put it in a pot and cook. Order probably doesn't matter too much!

I think I should add that you take that mixture and stir some rice into it at the end.

Food

thesamovar — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 05:11:53 +0100

At some point I might put some more general food related things on here, but for the moment you can just go straight to my recipes page. In the meantime, you might like to read the food section of my blog.

Recipes

thesamovar — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:51:12 +0100

These recipes are collected from various sources, and the attributions are not guaranteed to be accurate. Elements from the recipes of Elizabeth David, Delia Smith, Heston Blumenthal, Marcella Hazan, Rose Gray & Ruth Rogers (River Cafe), and probably innumerable others that don't spring to mind will be found throughout, but they have evolved, or at least mutated. Some of them are also out of date. How can a recipe be out of date you may ask? Well, I've changed my mind about how to cook some of them since writing them. They occasionally get updated. The full list of recipes is below, or you can see the expanded list with short descriptions. You might also like to read the recipes section of my blog.

More of my recipes on other pages:

More favourites by other people:

Lentil and Chorizo Stew