Chicken pasta soup stew

Vague recipe, sorry.

Roast a chicken.  Allow to cool whole.  Observe how nice it looks after having rested for an hour!

Saute onion, celery, carrot, adding dried oregano and garlic towards end.

Add boiling water and a chicken stock cube (or chicken stock).  Simmer 15 mins.  Blend (pulse a few times) half of it .  Return all to pan.  Add cream and lemon juice.  Add pasta.  Simmer 5 mins.  Add frozen peas or other green vegetables.  Simmer another 5 mins.  Add cut up chicken.  Simmer together another few minutes.  Taste and adjust seasoning.

Macaroni with courgettes and St Agur 'Blue Creme'

See picture...

Fry courgettes with some dried herbs in olive oil.  Add a glass of white wine, bubble briefly, add Blue Cream to your desire, a dash of normal cream also if you have it, and toss with cooked macaroni.

Minestrone soup (2 stage)

Basically you boil/poach the meat first then make a soup with the meat and the stock...

Serves c.8 generously

Full ingredients list

1 bacon hock (preferred), or 1 very large slice (300g) of slab bacon (like unsliced streaky bacon; not pancetta)
300g of stewing steak (eg. skirt; chuck; brisket)
1/2 btl red wine
5 onions
4 carrots
1 thing of celery
4 cloves garlic
2 cans whole plum tomatoes
Large bunch of thyme
1/2 spring or other tender cabbage
Handful green beans
Handful garden peas (assuming frozen here)
c. 100g small pasta shapes eg. little stars or orzo
3 tbsp very finely chopped flat leaf parsley (measured when chopped)
4tbsp vegetable oil
100g butter

To serve:
Grated parmesan cheese; extra virgin olive oil; ground black pepper

Stage 1

Place the bacon in a small pan.  Cover with cold water and bring to a boil with the lid on.  Boil for roughly 5-10 minutes.  This is to rid the joint of excess saltiness and is a vital (and easy) step.  Dump it into a sink, wash it with cold water.

Place the bacon, beef, and some of the stock vegetables, all finely sliced, in a snug pot.  Ie. 3 onions; 2 carrots; 3 sticks celery; all the thyme.  Add a bay leaf/parsley stalks/whatever else you have.  Pour over the wine and top up with cold water.  Bring to a simmer.  Simmer off any scum that arises then adjust to a very slow simmer.  It takes time to adjust it to the right level, over the heat, because if your heat is at its lowest level the boil will be very sensitive to exactly how 'ajar' the lid is.  Poach like this for 4 hours.

Stage 2

Empty the above into a colander over a bowl once cooled for 20 minutes.  It's practical here to put the liquid and meat (separated) in the fridge until the next day.  Discard all the other vegetables in the stock.

Chop all the remaining vegetables finely.  In the vegetable oil sweat them adding each five minutes after the last in the following order: Onions; celery; carrots; garlic (briefly) then add the canned tomatoes.  Slice these against the back of a wooden spoon.  Cook like this for 5 minutes.  Chop the meat small then add this along with the stock.  Add more liquid if you think there isn't enough (this is bulk cooking!), and cook at this point for 1 hour.

Add the cabbage, finely shredded, and green beans cut into 1cm lengths.  Simmer another 20 minutes.

Add the pasta shapes and when they are nearly done add the frozen peas which only need to simmer briefly.

Add the chopped parsley at the very last moment and season well with salt and pepper.  You can also adjust the flavour with sugar if there is insufficient sweetness or red wine vinegar for acidity.

Top each serving with grated parmesan cheese, and pour a little extra virgin olive oil over then finish with extra pepper.  Should work!

Pasta with spinach, gorgonzola and cherry tomatoes

Serves 2

1 bag of leaf spinach (they seem mostly the same size to me)
15g butter
100ml double cream
150g gorgonzola cheese
Handful cherry tomatoes

200g pasta
parmesan, salt, pepper

Wash the spinach.  Get a large pan of water boiling.  Drop the spinach into this pan.  Stir with a wooden spoon and cook for one minute maximum.  Drain into a colander and wash immediately with cold running water.  When cool, gather the spinach up in a ball which you squeeze as tightly as possible to eliminate liquid.  Chop finely.

Meanwhile melt the butter in a large frying pan and lightly saute the cherry tomatoes with some seasoning.  Add the spinach and other sauce ingredients to this pan, and at this point you can put the pasta on to cook.

Simmer the sauce well until it has a nice coating consistency and concentrated flavour.  You can adjust with salt. pepper and lemon juice.

When the pasta is cooked add it to the frying pan and give everything a bit of a cook together before serving with parmesan.

Roast tomato sauce for spaghetti

It's worth making a big batch of this as it's pretty versatile and tasty.  Nicest thing I've cooked in a while anyway.  I'm sure you can work out quantities yourself.

Tomatoes

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

Garlic

Basil

Spaghetti

Parmesan

Dressed rocket to serve with

Wash the tomatoes then de-stem by removing a conical plug with a paring knife.  Place in a tray in a single layer, pour on some oil, work around with your hands then roast for 1 1/2 hours at 140C or until they look nicely concentrated without being burnt - or even coloured at all really - and most of the liquid in the tray has evaporated.  Some liquid in the tray is absolutely fine though.  Remove and leave to cool in the tray for at least 20 minutes before emptying into a bowl.  Add finely chopped garlic, salt, pepper and sugar to taste, with some additional olive oil.  Shouldn't need too much sugar but a little bit is nice.  Break them up a little with a spatula.  They will improve if stored in the fridge like this for several days.

When ready to serve, boil spaghetti until very under-done (it will finish cooking in the sauce).  Wash the basil, pick leaves off the stem and roll the leaves up together to allow you to slice it finely.  In a large wide open frying pan or wok, warm the sauce with the basil.  Ladle a spoon of the pasta's cooking water into the pan too and then the pasta when drained.  Cook over a medium heat until the spaghetti is nicely al dente, tossing as it cooks.  Toss with parmesan cheese off the heat just before serving, and serve with extra cheese, black pepper, some olive oil poured over and the dressed rocket.  Hope you like it!

Macaroni cheese

I actually have no idea how my mother's macaroni cheese tasted so good as a child.  There was one with bacon bits in and tomato on top for my dad and sisters, and one without the tomato for me.  I was very fussy!  It might have been a Delia recipe.

Hopefully there are some tips in here for beginner and advanced alike.  One addition could possibly be half a teaspoon of English mustard powder, which I think would be really nice in a cauliflower cheese sauce to be served with roast beef.

Macaroni cheese

Serves 2

25g butter

20g plain flour

300ml milk

decent handful of mature cheddar (has to be mature) plus more for on top

salt

ground white or cayenne pepper

squeeze of lemon juice (or white wine vinegar)

grating of nutmeg

200g macaroni or penne

The first thing to do is to boil the kettle for the pasta water.

Gently melt butter in a saucepan.  Add flour and cook gently for 1 minute, whisking.  It should bubble well but not brown at all.  Add the milk 1/3rd at a time, whisking and cooking after each addition until thickened.  Once all added simmer gently for a few minutes, whisking every now and then so it doesn't catch on the bottom.  At this point you can put the macaroni into a large volume of heavily salted boiling water.

Add the cheese to the sauce, bit of salt and pepper, squeeze of lemon and nutmeg if you have it.  You need to leave the macaroni very slightly underdone as it will continue to cook in the oven, so taste it constantly until ready.

The big secret is to have a generous amount of sauce for the amount of pasta... drain the pasta into a colander and add to the sauce.  Add only enough pasta from the colander to the sauce, mixing as you go, so that the proportions are right.  Use the pasta's cooking pot if the sauce saucepan is not large enough - but add the pasta in the same way and save what you don't need for something else.

Pour the contents into a gratin dish, sprinkle evenly with more cheese (or top with sliced tomatoes, parmesan and oil as per the photos below), salt and pepper the surface.  Bake at 180C for 20 minutes then finish browning it under the grill.

Last thing, let it cool for five minutes before serving.  Piping hot macaroni cheese tastes of very little.

Spaghetti Bolognese

There has been a request for Bolognese.  This superb recipe comes from Marcella Hazan's The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and creates something very special from everyday ingredients through clever - essential indeed - technique.  The final mashing process is my only addition.  It means you don't have to chop the veg so fine at the start.

Many Bolognese recipes call for red wine, beef stock, browning the mince etc., which creates a richness that I can see is probably to British tastes.  This on the other hand is lighter and altogther vastly refined and delicious.

Spaghetti Bolognese


350g beef mince.  Or 2/3rd beef mince and 1/3rd pork mince.
250g whole milk
250ml dry white wine
25g butter
2 tbsp veg oil
3 carrots peeled and chopped
2 celery sticks, outer curve peeled, chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
500g tinned Italian tomatoes, chopped up, with their juice
nutmeg

Sweat the onion in the oil and butter until translucent.  Add the carrot and celery and stir for 2 minutes.

Add the mince, salt to draw out the fat, and cook until it has lost its raw red colour.  Season with nutmeg then pour in the milk and simmer until most of the liquid has gone.  This protects the meat from the acid of the wine and tomatoes.

Pour in the wine and again simmer until most of the liquid is gone.  Then add the tomatoes, and once it is simmering nicely reduce the heat very low, and leave to cook uncovered for at least three hours (it's a Saturday afternoon recipe, not Friday night), preferably more, stirring every so often.  It's a good sign if the oil separates.  Mash with a potato masher after around 2 hours to improve the texture, but leaving time afterwards for the oil to separate again.  Season with pepper, taste for salt and stir well before serving.  It needs to be seasoned generously.


Serve with al dente linguine, spaghetti, spaghettini or fresh linguine, and grated parmesan.  It will mature in the fridge over several days.

This was a batch of triple the quantity above

Spaghetti carbonara

My housemate James Marshall and I tested a decent number of carbonara recipes while at university.  In fact, we ate little else for about a year.  This is how I cook it these days.  It's actually very similar to the recipes described by both Rick Stein and Marcella Hazan, in ingredients.  Rick Stein's fantastic YouTube video is available here but I have spelled out a few details below.  Note that with regards to the spaghetti, fresh pasta is possibly too rich and eggy for a rich and eggy sauce, so use dried, and leave it firm to the bite when cooked.  Chewing releases the flavour.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Serves 2

Dried spaghetti of a good brand
1 egg plus 1 yolk
Grated parmesan (or pecorino or half-half)
Pancetta or streaky bacon strips
Olive oil
Butter
1/2 small clove finely chopped or crushed garlic (depending on strength)
Finely chopped parsley

Begin by boiling the kettle to get the spagetti cooking as soon as you can.  Get the pancetta pieces frying with a bit of olive oil in a small saucepan.

Meanwhile prepare the sauce by combining the egg and yolk with around a tablespoon of grated cheese and some black pepper in a mug.  You might not need salt given the salty cheese and bacon.  Note that the recipe can easily be done for one person (post work?), in which case I would use one egg and break it gently over a sink to dispose of a small amount of white and keep the right balance with yolk.

If the well cooked bacon has thrown off a huge amount of fat you may like to remove some of it, otherwise proceed by adding a tablespoon of olive oil, a knob of butter and the garlic and parsley.  Return to a low heat to just infuse the oil with the garlic.

By this time the spaghetti will be cooked, so you can drain it, however here comes a crucial detail.  You are going to add the spaghetti and the egg mixture to the pancetta pan, however you must allow the pancetta pan to cool first otherwise the egg will scramble.  And note that if it is a thick, heavy based saucepan you will probably need to let it cool for a good few minutes.  If the pan is already cool enough you can transfer the pasta straight into it with tongs and spoon in a little of the salty pasta water to boost the sauce.

All the recipe books tell you not to put the pan back on the heat once you've added the egg, but I don't agree with this.  It's fine, as long as it's a very low heat and you keep stirring the contents.  Of course the aim is to thicken the sauce without scrambling the egg.

One tip is to grate some parmesan onto the plate before placing the spagetti on top (with more cheese and black pepper).  It's not heathly but it is cheap, quick and delicious!