So back to the food. I woke up this morning with a text message from my friend Frances, who is studying in Italy at the moment.
Hi! I’m staying in a hostel in Verona tonight –13.50 euro – bargain! Had Tortellini and Octopus tonight, squid & polenta in Venice yesterday – so good!
How fabby! We had squid last night! And tonight, by sheer coincidence, I had planned to cook a Venetian recipe… one of the “Six Ideas for Kitchen Suppers” from the Dinner chapter. I will have to cook this for Frances when she comes back.
6. Tagliatelle with Chicken from the Venetian Ghetto
Sometime in the afternoon, I got a message from my brother…
Dan: Yo. What’s happenin 4 dinner 2nite? Is it ok if Stacy comes along?
Me: Yeah, sure.
It technically serves 4 “abundantly”, and Nigella recipes are always quite generous anyway, so I wasn’t stressed about the extra person at all. In fact, I was feeling quite happy. "Wow, that's really nice of my brother to ask before bringing people for dinner... I've trained him well..."
This recipe involves roasting a chicken, then ripping it up and tossing it through cooked tagliatelle, sultanas, pine nuts and rosemary. I chucked the chicken in the oven, went to the gym, came home, took it out of the oven and continued cooking.
Roast chicken – it smelt so good it was almost a shame to rip it up! La Ionica brand – that’s the chicken I’m pickin!
At about 6:30, Daniel comes home with Stacy… and Adeline! That’s right, TWO friends! “Hi Sarah, thanks for having us over!” Grrrrrrrr!! Yeah, thanks Daniel, that’s just great. Anyway, I just added an extra handful of pasta, pine nuts and raisins and hoped for the best.
It was fun making it too – Mum, Adeline and I hacked at the chicken with our hands whilst Daniel and Stacy danced around like maniacs to a South American house CD…
Tagliatelle - in my Living Kitchen serving platter
And it turned out to be so yummy! I would have never thought to put fresh rosemary in a pasta sauce but it worked beautifully. I absolutely love pine nuts and raisins as well.
The pine nut and raisin combo makes an appearance in several wonderful Nigella recipes, such as her Roast Chicken Salad, from Feast, and her Pappardelle with Courgettes and Sultanas, from Forever Summer. I'd also done a homespun version of this pasta last year, after seeing it on Nigella Bites but forgetting the actual recipe.
And thank goodness, there was heaps of food for all of us.
I wasn’t going to prepare a dessert, but it was so nice sitting around chatting with everyone that I hastily pulled a suggestion out of the “Reminders of and Ideas For Hasty Improvisations” from the Fast Food chapter – vanilla ice-cream with pulverized dark chocolate.
7. Ice-cream with Dark Chocolate
Ice-cream
After eating we just continued talking in the kitchen. This period of time also unfortunately included me hoovering down the rest of the pulverised chocolate. Shhh....! (It's ok though, I went to the gym today!)
No comments:
Post a Comment