Category: pasta

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cheese food parmesan pasta truffle oil wine

heston blumenthal’s macaroni cheese

heston blumenthal's macaroni cheese

Yes eagle-eyes, you’re right: that’s not macaroni in the picture. But this recipe is full of substitutions. What it tells me is this recipe has a great base from which to build on.

This is Heston’s recipe for macaroni cheese from How To Cook Like Heston, and is predictably very, very tasty. Like most people I usually kick cheese sauces off with a roux, but this approach melts cheese into reduced wine and stock. I’m amazed it works. I think I let the cheese cook a tiny bit too long and it started to split on me, but just about caught it in time. I also veered off from the recipe as I didn’t have a posh cheddar, nor cream cheese in the house but instead let it down with pasta water. That’s another bonkers bit – in the original recipe the pasta is cooked in a very shallow amount of water but I didn’t quite have the attention to monitor that one today. I boiled it in the usual way and it worked just fine.

I’ll definitely be making cheese sauces from this base in future – no more floury rouxs for me.

The original recipe is here, and you can find it in Heston Blumenthal At Home (as “truffle macaroni”) as well.

Heston Blumenthal’s macaroni cheese (serves 4):

300g fusilli

300ml white wine

300ml chicken stock

140g cheddar, grated

1 heaped teaspoon cornflour

A few drops of truffle oil

A little grated parmesan

  1. Get the pasta on to boil in a large saucepan of salted water and cook according to the packet instructions.
  2. In a separate pan reduce the wine down to “30ml” (I have no idea how you can easily tell what level you’re down to without a lot of faff so eyeball it and trust your gut). Add the stock to this wine reduction.
  3. Preheat the grill. Toss the cheese with the cornflour and add to the winey stock. Turn the heat right down low, add some black pepper and stir until thoroughly combined. As soon as it’s smooth turn the heat off.
  4. Drain the pasta and reserve some of the water. Trickle over a tiny amount of truffle oil, toss and add to the sauce, then transfer to a baking dish. Top with the parmesan and pop under the grill until bubbling.
Categories
bacon cheese mushroom pasta porcini roux

baked penne with bacon and porcini

I’d heard excited whispers on Twitter about a new BBC programme from Simon Hopkinson called The Good Cook. His name was only distantly familiar to me; I wasn’t directly aware of him.

So I sat down to watch it with little expectation. I became an instant convert. Simple, honest food that is achievable, excellent and done with love.

Just about everything featured is worth cooking, in a programme refreshingly devoid of format, gimmick or travelogue. Only the tiniest scraps of production remain: incessant overuse of funky chart hits, just because the BBC can; and occasional 30 second jaunts to far-flung places showing stock footage of people making cheese.

These are minor quibbles against the brilliance of Simon’s own natural easy going charm and obvious skill. His effortless style makes everything look easy and worth trying. So I’ve started with this, a luscious and rich pasta bake with a few small changes down to what I had lurking around waiting to be used up. It’s absolutely tremendous and really easy. It even encourages the all-in-one roux method which works like a dream to produce a silky and slurpable sauce. Please run to your storecupboards and try it now. You must have some of those dried mushrooms in there somewhere, right?

Simon’s original recipe can be found here.

Baked penne with bacon and porcini (serves 2):

500ml milk

20g dried porcini mushrooms

40g butter

25g flour

140g penne

6 rashers streaky bacon, diced

A couple of tablespoons grated parmesan

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Pop the mushrooms and milk in a pan and bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile make the sauce. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Keep it moving about for a minute to cook out the floury taste. Sieve off the milk then add it to the roux in one go whisking all the time. When smooth keep on a gentle heat for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally and allowing to thicken. Check for seasoning towards the end of the cooking time.
  3. Get the pasta on to cook according to the packet instructions. When done, throw the pasta, mushrooms, bacon and a third of the parmesan into the sauce and toss really well to get everything coated. Turn out into a baking dish, add another third of parmesan and bake for 30 mins until bubbling. Top with the remaining parmesan to serve.
Categories
bacon beans paprika pasta tomato turkey

turkey & bean pasta

I’m a get-your-shopping-delivered kind-of-guy. In a family where both parents work someone carrying the shopping to your door just makes sense. It has it blips, when some things aren’t available, or maybe you can’t quite figure out what 350g of leeks look like so you over-order on purpose, but generally speaking there’s palpable relief when you shut the door on full cupboards without having left the house.

At the moment Sainsbury’s are running a “5 meals for £20” in a planner format. No ready meals, all recipe-led stuff. Naturally it’s not incredible gourmet food but homely, economic grub. I’ve been trying them out this week including turkey & bean pasta.

I substituted the chilli for paprika just for the hell of it. This should be as plain as you like but against expectation it’s jolly filling and jolly tasty. I froze some for another day, and will be looking forward to it.

Turkey and bean pasta (serves 4):

200g bacon lardons

500g turkey thigh mince

1 tin red kidney beans, drained

4 carrots, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon tomato puree

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 cloves garlic

300ml vegetable stock

1 tin tomatoes

350g pasta (e.g. fusilli)

  1. Get a frying pan on a high heat and add a splash of olive oil. Add the bacon and fry for a minute or two, until the bacon is coloured all over.
  2. Add the turkey and carrots and continue to stir fry for a couple more minutes until the turkey is browned. Add the puree, paprika and cumin and continue to fry for another minute, mixing well.
  3. Add the garlic, stock and tinned tomatoes. When it comes to the boil reduce to a simmer for ten minutes.
  4. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the pack instructions. When it’s done take a splash of the pasta water into the turkey stew then toss together with the drained pasta. Serve with garlic bread.
Categories
breadcrumbs cauliflower cheese macaroni pancetta pasta

cauliflower macaroni cheese

Not quite a 30 minute meal. It’s simpler than that. It’s yanked from Jamie’s 30 minute cauliflower macaroni, chicory salad with insane dressing, and lovely stewed fruit. But I only fancied the cauliflower macaroni bit.

I loused up the recipe a bit – I somehow ended up blitzing the cheese with the lovely breadcrumbs, which meant the topping was cheesy but the sauce too bland. Stupid spud. I still feel like the whole thing could use a little more seasoning though.

Cauliflower macaroni:

8 rasher of pancetta

1 head of cauliflower, quartered

300g macaroni

Large sprig of rosemary, leaves picked

200g cheddar

2 thick slices of bread

2 cloves of garlic

150g creme fraiche

  1. Get the oven on 220°C. Lay the pancetta in a baking tray ready to take the finished dish and pop in the oven while you carry on.
  2. Put the cauliflower and the macaroni in a large pot and fill with boiling salted water, and keep on the simmer.
  3. Get the food processor out with the chopping blade. Get the pancetta out of the oven and whizz this up with the bread, rosemary and a dash of olive oil.
  4. Drain off the cauliflower & pasta and reserve some of the water. Tip the veg/mac into the roasting tray you used for the pancetta and put on a low heat. Pour in a little water, crush in the garlic and mix in the creme fraiche and cheddar. Mix everything right up, adding more water and seasoning as necessary to get a smooth, silky sauce. Spread out evenly, top with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until bubbling.
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