111: A really good spaghetti Bolognese, p21

Service resumed after a particularly busy week or so of conferencing and camping, and a lack of proper home cooking!

And a nice easy comfort food dish to ease us back in, and use up some of the contents of the overflowing fridge (post-Tescos delivery... how do I always overestimate the amount of fridge/freezer storage space we've got and have to cram it all in and/or use lots up within a couple of days of delivery??).

Almost the same as my usual basic plus throw-in-whatever-I-think-of-off-the top-of-my-head spag bol, but for one crucial difference - the addition of a large amount of cream near the end... The result was very different to usual! I'm not entirely sure it was for the good... Very tasty (cream tends to have that effect), but not quite spag bol to me - which should be really meaty and tomatoey and rich and strong, with the addition of lots of red wine, beef stock cubes, worcestershire sauce, etc. T liked it a lot (possibly more than mine??!!) but although it was nice, it tasted more like the contents of a lasagna to me - with the bechamel mixed up with the mince. An interesting experiment though, and as ever good to try different ideas... :)

93: A soup of roasted summer vegetables, p220

This looked little it might be a bit of a meh soup, as Nigel says getting 'rid of a whole heap of vegetables', but roasting the veggies in the oven first, like the tomato soup last week, really made a spectacular difference to the depth of flavour - and surprisingly, the fennel, which I don't really like, added a further depth, and the broth with the soup is almost meaty it's so rich. There's nothing about blending the soup at all in the recipe, so I slightly mashed the roasted tomatoes, which had collapsed in the roasting tray but still stayed in two large tomatoey lumps. Yum. And a good way to use up that cabbage of guilt...

89: Orecchiette with ricotta, broad beans and mint, p194

Hmm, there are three broad bean recipes here... and it takes a LOT of whole broad beans to get more than a teeny palmful of beans post-podding. And I don't really like broad beans.... :( Or do I? These weren't too bad actually. A tip from a friend, which Nigel mentions too, is to remove the outer skins from all beans larger than a thumbnail, and it worked - not bad at all. Not great. Not amazingly tasty. But not the icky, grey tasting little pellets I remembered from when I was little.

64: Spaghetti with new season's garlic, p137

Garlic-fest!!

Just a quick supper for me only tonight, and since I'd got some new garlic for the roast chicken yesterday, thought I should use some more of it up. Two teeny cloves and boy was this garlicky... I think I'd probably saute the garlic for longer next time to soften the 'effect' a little, but it was v scrummy nonetheless :)

This really isn't a very exciting picture...

27: Mushroom pappardelle, p283

Not really a recipe this, very similar to the kind of thing I do for a quick mid-week super, garlic 'shrooms on pappardelle (actually the fresh linguine I made last week, dried now). Chestnut mushrooms gave it a nice nutty taste, and the parsley and Parmesan added a little extra flavour.

16: Orecchiette with roast tomato and basil sauce, p197

A very very easy one this, but a nice twist on a tomatoey-sauce on top of pasta - by sticking the tomatoes and some garlic in the oven for a while to roast first, they go deliciously sweet and bring out the flavour of the basil, and adding a little bit of cream just makes it darn scrummy. Will definitely do this many times over the next year.

 

15: Lemon and basil linguine, p150

There are a few relatively simple pasta suppers in the book which give me a good excuse to make homemade pasta. Sometimes making pasta is a disaster and I think whenever I've had a problem it's because the dough hasn't been chilled for long enough - 30mins isn't enough, 1.5hrs seems to be much better. So a happy afternoon making dough, letting it chill, then rolling it out to make lots of lovely linguine (some of it nearly a metre long!) and a couple of bowls-worth of orecchiette ('little ears', so sweet!)...

 

 

 

Once dry,  a couple of minutes in a boiling pan of water, and then a creamy (but no cream!) lemony basily Parmesany sauce, and voila!