Category: pasta

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food mussels pancetta parsley pasta

moules carboniere

Spud Jr has got the cooking bug. In his Summer holidays I’ve managed to get him some work experience in a professional kitchen and he’s having a whale of a time. He’s gaining loads of interesting skills and learning some new swearwords into the bargain too. He’s also had the chance to cook some things he’s never used before because I don’t tend to have them around, such as sea bass, salmon, and mussels.

He enjoyed mussels so much I thought we’d have some for dinner. We had already planned to have penne carbonara so I figured we could combine the two somehow.

I kept the silky, eggy sauce of carbonara, with the booze and fresh parsley of moules marinere. And it was a hit! Franco-Italian relations are preserved once again.

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moules carboniere

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 100 g pancetta diced
  • 1 leek finely sliced into strips
  • White wine
  • 200 g mussels
  • 150 ml single cream
  • 1 egg yolk
  • A little grating of parmesan
  • Small bunch of parsley chopped

Instructions

  • Get a large frying pan over a high heat and a large saucepan filled with salted water on the boil. Cook your pasta according to the packet instructions while you do everything else.
  • In the pan fry the pancetta until browned and then add the leeks. Stir fry until softened, then add the water and mussels. Add a lid and cook for 4 minutes.
  • While the mussels steam, combine the cream, egg and parmesan. Season with plenty of black pepper. Remove the frying pan from the heat and add the cream mix and the pasta, stirring and tossing the whole time. Discard any mussels that have not opened up and serve in bowls with a sprinkling of parsley.
Categories
pasta sausages tomato

sausage pappardelle pasta

Despite working in the capital every day, I don’t spend enough time being a tourist around London. One spare Sunday we tramped off as a family to do just that. We took in the Princess Diana memorial gardens, having fun on the pirate ship. We paddled around the nearby fountain, which was mountains of fun. We then plodded along Constitution Hill, marvelled at how shiny the statue of Eros was, and did some ooh-ahh selfies in front of Buckingham Palace (she was in, by the way).

After all that stamping about, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out. A short hop away was Jamie’s Italian Piccadilly. Now I haven’t set foot in a Jamie’s Italian in quite a while so I thought it was worth a return visit. We all asked for pasta dishes and were served up in double-quick time. There was a lovely pesto gnocchi with purple potatoes, a heavenly carbonara and rich sausage pappardelle. I enjoyed it so much, I set to making my own version.

 

The sausages make or break this one – buy the best you can get hold of. I had some lovely herby Toulouse (not very Italian I grant you) but anything spiked with lots of flavours would be perfect here. I like those ‘Italian style’ sausages you can get from delis, punched up with fennel and rosemary which I’ve tried to ape here. I also chose to make my own pasta because I was in the mood for it having just watching Gennaro knock up a batch but buying your own would be no problem. It’s a rich and delicious lip-smacking pasta dish.

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sausage pappardelle pasta

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 stalks celery finely chopped
  • 6 - 8 good quality sausages
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
  • 1 leaves large sprig of rosemary picked and finely chopped
  • 400 g passata
  • 300 g pappardelle

Instructions

  • Preheat your oven to 140C. Get a large pan over a medium heat and add a splash of oil.
  • Add the celery and fennel seeds to the oil and fry for 3 minutes until the fennel is fragrant and the celery has softened.
  • While the celery cooks, skin the sausages and crumble the meat into tiny bits. Turn up the heat under the pan and add the sausage. Cook the sausage for a minute or two and then add the passata, plus fill the same container with water and add that to the pan too. Cover and put in the oven for an hour.
  • When the pasta sauce is ready, cook your pasta according to the packet instructions, drain and fold through the sauce before serving. Grate some parmesan over the top and enjoy with garlic bread.

As fluke would have it, Kavey also visited Jamie’s Italian recently!

Categories
food pasta reviews

food at 52 cookery school review

I bought myself a pasta machine for my birthday. I had a few goes with the dough with mixed results, though I did manage to knock out some decent ravioli. What luck then just after that I was offered a Food at 52 cookery school review opportunity, in their Flavours of Italy evening class.

I’ve visited the Food at 52 venue a few times. I went back in 2010 for Tilda rice (at their previous venue), filmed a chilli recipe there and cooked with Ade Edmondson. This time I was actually going to try out their cookery classes. I was in a small group of four, two men and two women taught by one of the founders, John. The first thing that strikes you is the quirkiness of the venue. It’s a rag-tag of trinkets from travels and cookery knick-knacks. John and his family are seasoned travellers and have brought odds and ends back from every corner of the globe. That’s not to say the kitchen equipment you use is scattered; we used Global knives, Magimix processors and top quality ingredients.

During this Italian-themed evening lesson lasting three and a half hours we prepared four dishes and ate them as soon as they were ready. We started with making pasta dough. As I said it was the part I was looking forward to and it was the small tips I picked up here that made the tuition invaluable. I didn’t realise just how long you should knead it for, or how to get the ratio of egg to flour just right. It’s this stuff you can only get by being shown in person and no amount of TV chefs or cookbooks can help you here. A few days after the course I made some more tagliatelle at home and it was so much better after the tuition.

We made the tagliatelle and served it with a lightning quick pesto, slightly different to the recipe I plump for, omitting garlic and using pasta water to let it down. It gave a creamy, luxurious texture.

We followed this with a chicken soffrito, a dish of braised chicken legs over a vegetable dice. A great opportunity to practice knife skills, and learn a mean sauce into the bargain.

Lastly we made an amaretti semifreddo and cantucci with coffee.

It was a thoroughly entertaining night with great company. I walked back to the station with a fellow classmate from Essex who received the cooking lessons as a gift, and he was really pleased with the informal nature of it. There were no chef’s whites and no expectation of current effort. Everything was presented with a laid-back “have a go” attitude and everyone felt included.

If you’re looking for an informal yet intelligent cooking class where you get your hands dirty, I thoroughly recommend Food at 52. It’s entertaining and educational.

I was a guest of Food at 52 in a class of other paying clients. All those words up there are honest.

Categories
food pasta peas saffron

pea and comte ravioli with saffron butter

 

Many, many years ago I owned a pasta machine. I used it until it literally fell apart, tossed it in the bin and forgot about it. This was 12 years ago or so.

I figured it was about time to get myself a new one. I picked up a dirt cheap one from Amazon to play around and got stuck in.

I found that not all pasta doughs are equal. Not equal at all! Some of them are doughy, some oily, some crumbly… it took a while to find a dough I was really happy with. I made some tagliatelle and similar shapes and was pretty pleased with it.

I’ve been following the excellent thehestonblumenthalteam on Instagram. I think it exists just to shift Sage Appliances merch but they really do post some cracking recipes. Their recipe for crab, pea and cheese ravioli looked divine and they kindly sent me the recipe.

I adapted it for my own larder and pushed it in a slightly different direction. I used some excellent Comte cheese, and gave it a luxurious twist with a saffron butter. I was really pleased with how it came out: rich saffron on first bite, with smooth sweet pea and cheese inside firm pasta. Lovely.

The pea puree recipe is as they sent it to me, and it’s so good. Like, just make a batch of it to eat with a spoon good. I’ll definitely be using that in future.

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pea and comte ravioli with saffron butter

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the pea puree:

  • 25 g unsalted butter
  • 1 clove garlic finely minced
  • 1/2 onion finely chopped
  • 100 g vegetable stock
  • 200 g frozen Bird's Eye peas
  • 50 g unsalted butter

For the pasta dough:

  • 200 g 00 flour
  • 50 g fine semolina flour
  • 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk

For the ravioli:

  • 100 g diced Comte cheese

For the saffron butter:

  • 1/2 onion finely chopped
  • 8 saffron threads
  • 20 ml white wine vinegar
  • 100 g unsalted butter chilled

Instructions

  • Melt the butter in a saucepan and sweat the garlic and onion until soft. Add the stock, bring to the boil, add the peas, bring back to the boil, and simmer for 45 seconds. Remove from the heat. Strain the peas reserving the cooking liquid. Place the pea mixture in a blender and blitz to a puree consistency, adding reserved liquid if need be. When smooth, chuck the butter in too, then strain through a sieve. Season to taste and reserve in a piping bag in the fridge. It should be quite firm when cold.
  • Place the flour and semolina in a bowl using a fork bring in the eggs until the dough begins to come together. Continue kneading until smooth and elastic. Shape the dough into a rectangle and wrap in clingfilm. Place in the fridge and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes.
  • After resting, roll the pasta into as fine sheets as possible and cut into discs measuring 6-8 cm using a pastry cutter.
  • Pipe a small amount of the cold pea puree in the centre and top with a cube of Comte. Lightly moisten the edges of the dough with water, fold the dough over into a half circle, pressing down the edges. Place them on a tray covered with flour, cover with cling film in the fridge for up to 3 hours.
  • Place the onion and vinegar in a frying pan. Add a splash of water and bring to the boil. Boil until the liquid is reduced by half and add the saffron and peas. Fry for one minute.
  • Cut the butter into chunks. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting.
  • Toss in a piece of butter and stir in briskly. Continue adding the butter, one piece at a time, stirring to melt each piece before adding the next.
  • Add the ravioli to the saucepan. After one minute they should float to the top. Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the saucepan to the frying pan - don't be too diligent on the draining, let a little cooking water spill into the butter. Once all the ravioli are in the sauce, crank the heat back up and baste the pasta in the butter. After one minute serve with freshly grated Comte.

Still hungry? Try Kavey’s pea ravioli, or Becca’s crispy fried tortellini.

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