Must've been a pretty big duck!

We had a relatively simple dinner tonight - spaghetti and meatballs.

327. Duck Meatballs (Feeding babies and small children)

This is the last of Nigella's 4 meatball recipes.

31. Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
145. Special Meatballs
260. Ham & Turkey Meatballs

For the balls, she says to mince up a duck breasts with a chopped, cooked cooked onion (fried in the rendered duck fat, naturally), milk-soaked bread, orange zest, an egg and cinnamon. I actually used meat from other parts of the duck - duck breasts are very expensive here, so the last time I needed duck breasts, I bought the whole duck (much cheaper per kilo), used the breasts, and froze the remaining carcass for this recipe. I defrosted it last night, and cut off as much meat as I could with a very sharp night tonight.

The meatball mixture turned out quite soft and gloopy, but they didn't break up or fall apart at all. You form the mixture into balls, fry it, and then drop the balls into a gently simmering tomato sauce.

I know that Nigella likes her meatballs with rice, but we always prefer it with pasta.


duck meat ball pasta

It was very nice, and perfect for a freezing cold night. But you know, after having tried all of the meatball recipes, I truly believe that the original (plain beef) was still the best.

My 300th Recipe!!!

Wow! I can't believe I made my 300th recipe tonight. That's 300 recipes I've made. In 284 days. Out of the one book. Depending on how you look at it, it's either a big achievement... or concrete evidence of insanity. I think we all know which way I'm looking at it.

For your interest, here is what my 100th and 200th recipes were:

100. Lemon Pie
200. Watercress & Raw Mushroom Salad

300. Baked Veal and Ham Pasta

This recipe is undoubtedly one of the obscure ones. It's tucked away in the Cooking in Advance chapter, between the soups and the stews. And the long list of ingredients and instructions make it look a lot more complicated than it really is. That is to say, I probably wouldn't have thought to make it if I weren't undertaking this project.

I'm actually curious as to whether anyone else has made this, because I can't recall anyone talking about it or posting photos of it on blogs or photo-sharing sites. Anyone who's made this please let me know!

But in reality, making this recipe isn't hard at all. There are 3 components to it:

a mixture of finely chopped vegetables cooked with marsala, pancetta and minced veal

500g of cooked penne

a large quantity of white sauce with parmesan added

So, you make these 3 things, and then stir them together, reserving some white sauce to pour over at the end. Nigella suggests mixing them in the baking tray itself, but there wasn't nearly enough room. I stirred them together in the pot.


big pot

At this stage it smells pretty damn good. And it tasted good too. In fact, you could eat it straight out of the pot and not bother with baking it at all. After my little taste test, I was severely tempted to immediately polish off the rest... but restrained myself.

Once it's all mixed up, you pour it into a buttered baking dish, and then pour the reserved white sauce over. Then you put some dots of butter and more grated parmesan on top before baking it. As you can see, I didn't reserve enough white sauce, so it's sparsely dotted over, rather than blanketing the pasta.


dishes

Actually, once the mixture is all prepared and put in the dish, you can let it cool, cover it and leave it in the fridge for a few days until you want to bake it. (Hence its position in the Cooking in Advance chapter). But I wanted to eat it straight away, so it went directly into the oven.


baked

Yum! Mum and I ate this for supper, late on Saturday night, with a glass of red wine, watching Only Fools and Horses on TV. It was fantastic comfort food - all that carb and cheese and meat. It's like a grown-up macaroni and cheese, but not one of those pretentiously elegant grown-up versions, containing 5 different expensive cheeses and super-spesh dry-cured bacon air-freighted from a tiny Italian village. All the ingredients were available at Coles. And most importantly, it just tasted good.


2 plates

I'm back

Hello!

I've just come back from spending the weekend in Sydney with some friends. (This is why the last two posts took so long to be published). We were staying in a fully-contained serviced apartment complete with kitchen... but I only got the opportunity to cook once. (The rest of the time was spent frequenting Bill Granger's restaurants, see here for details). On our first night there, my friend Matt & I made spaghetti carbonara for the group. It was easy to make, even without my copy of How to Eat on me, and it went down well.


matt cooking

I made up the sauce - stirring together egg yolks, cream, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper - while Matt did the more strenuous boiling of the pasta and frying of the bacon.


pot of pasta


bowl of pasta


bowls of pasta

We only used a 500gram packet of pasta for 5 of us (4 hungry boys and a greedy girl), but after spending the whole day wolfing down Krispy Kreme donuts, we were happy with that amount of pasta.

A Very Nigella Dinner

I was hungry at about 7 o'clock tonight, and decided to make linguine carbonara for my dinner. This has become a useful last-minute dinner, now that my culinary repertoire has been so vastly expanded by How to Eat. I used the linguine that I have stockpiled in my storecupboard, a couple of pieces of bacon that were glad-bagged in my freezer, and some leftover cream which was sitting in the fridge.

Read the "Storecupboard", "Freezer" and "Fridge" sections at the end of the Basics etc. chapter, and you will understand why I am so proud of myself. An "efficient domestic angel", I am. For tonight, at least.

I guess this meal goes to show how much I've changed as a result of this project. When I first made carbonara, I didn't eat it (me eating pork? Never!) but according to my brother, the bacon was too chewy. And the second time I made it, it was disgustingly eggy.

But tonight, it was good, fantastic even. A perfect, gratifying, peaceful dinner.


Pasta.

I am so glad I started this project.

Lucky lucky, you're so lucky!

***Don't forget to post any questions you may have for me regarding the project here***

Nigella loves meatballs. That's a fact. Her meatball obsession didn't end with How to Eat (which includes four meatball recipes!), but has endured to the present day. There's the recipe for pasta and meatballs in Nigella Bites, and even in the most recent issue of Delicious magazine, Nigella's kiddie-friendly menu includes "Summer Meatballs".

260. Ham & Turkey Meatballs (Feeding Babies & Small Children)

Prior to this recipe, I had made 2 out of the 4 meatball recipes from How to Eat and been suitably impressed with both of them. (The similar meatballs from Nigella Bites are also delicious, incidentally). So, I was quite sure we'd enjoy these ones.

Of the ham and turkey meatballs, Nigella writes that they "were too moussey for adults, but... the children (and their friends) were very keen". They are a reformulation of Christmas dinner - leftover turkey and ham minced up and bound with sausage meat.

After Christmas, I carefully bagged up and froze the leftover turkey meat, and did the same with the ham in coca cola. Today, I bought some proper pork sausages from my butcher, and I was in business.


ham turkey sausages

I used the meat from one sausage, and also added some white bread, soaked in water and squeezed out, to make sure the mixture combined properly.


minced

I got 40 balls out of this mixture, although the quantity you get will depend (obviously) on the amounts of leftover meats you have, and on the dimensions of your balls.


balls

Then I cooked them in a tomato-based sauce, which had been simmering gently while I'd been forming the balls. (Yes, we all know the Nigella tomato sauce by now - finely chopped onion, garlic and carrot, cooked until soft, with tinned tomato added and simmered) .


pasta

And voilà! A delicious, climate-appropriate meal, which was not too moussy for the adults. Quite the opposite, we all loved it. I don't know what kids like to eat, but I suspect they would like this very much. And it would give them the energy to get through their busy kiddie days. I know this because this pasta gave me the energy I needed to go to the (totally rocking) Franz Ferdinand concert later that night. Wooh!

Mmm... Daniel... you like duck liver... don't you?

To feed my brother and I today at lunch, I looked again to the children's chapter.

238. Duck Liver Sauce

Now, in my opinion, you really can't go wrong with a Nigella recipe for pasta sauce. Or can you? After today's pasta, I'm unsure. Nigella says that duck livers are "sweeter and moussier than chicken livers, and so more child-friendly". Hmm. Sweet? Moussy? Since when would I want a sweet and moussy pasta sauce?

I bought some duck livers yesterday (when I bought the salmon), with a view to using them in this sauce today. I wasn't feeling optimistic as I opened the bag of duck livers - they smelled feral. But I persevered, rinsing them under water and letting them drain in a colander.


sweet and moussy

The method for the sauce is pretty much the same as normal - start by cooking an onion/garlic/bacon/carrot mixture until soft, then add the livers, followed by tomato passata, hoisin sauce and tinned tomatoes. Once it's all cooked, you whizz it up in a processor.


Check out my very 80's spag-bol presentation - tomato sauce on top of pasta.

Dan and I ate it in front of the tv, (Futurama, of course). Daniel very politely ate all of his pasta like a good boy, and didn't complain. I, on the other hand, was not impressed. It had this weird fluffy texture and taste (because of the livers, obviously), and I needed a shitload of parmesan cheese and chilli to make it palatable for me. About halfway through eating, I got used to it and didn't mind it any more, but I wouldn't be in a rush to make it again. In this instance, I think that ordinary meat (beef, chicken, lamb) would just taste better.

I love a good sausage

234. Pasta Sauce with Sausage (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

The idea for this sauce is that children love sausages, so logically, they should love a pasta sauce made out of sausages.

I'm not quite sure why I haven't made this one already; I always seem to be searching through How to Eat for tasty, quick, midweek meals. And this one certainly fits the bill.

Basically what you do is get some sausages, remove their skins, and cook them in a pasta sauce. You're supposed to use proper butcher's sausages, but because 2nd of January was still a public holiday, Rendinas was closed. We went to Safeway and got supermarket ones, which might sound ghastly to English readers, but were fine. I still stand my viewpoint that meat in Australian supermarkets is vastly superior to meat in English supermarkets. Proper English butcher's sausages however, I'm told, cannot be beat. If I ever just mention the word "sausage" to my friend Liam...

My friend Liam: Oh my GOD Sarah, you have to have proper breakfast sausages at a B&B in England... they're fucking awesome!! I've never had anything that good in Australia. I don't know what it is, but Australian butchers just can't do it!

At this point he usually sheds a tear or two.

Anyway, because I love to make grown men cry... Here's a picture of our supermarket sausages.

Sausages in packet


Skinned sausages - attractive

You know the typical tomato sauce - there at least a dozen versions of it in How to Eat - whizz up onions, carrots, garlic and celery in a food processor, cook until soft, then add the meat and brown it, then add a tin of tomatoes and simmer until cooked.


Here it is! 400g of pasta in the largest Living Kitchen serving plate. Enough for 3 of us, with leftovers to take to work.


one bowl

Easy peasy. And delicious! We all loved it, and I could easily include this in my repertoire of mideweek meals. I got many jealous looks from my co-workers today as they were eating their minging chicken sandwiches and I had a nice steaming bowl of spaghetti.

Man cannot live by mince pie alone...

... but I reckon I could give it a pretty good shot.

The rest of my family are not quite as mad-for-pie as I am, so I had to whip up a little something savoury for dinner. (Or as I like to call it, the break between mince pies).

One of my favourite recipes so far has to be the pasta with butter and stock cube juices (which, strangely enough, I've never made with stock cubes, only with actual pan juices) from the One & Two chapter. Given that we had an almost-full bowl of gelatinous goose gravy sitting in the fridge, I thought I could reprise the recipe for a delicious and quick meal.

pasta

This went down very well with myself, and the family. I believe that this is one of the best pasta sauces ever, and certainly the best way to use up old gravy. Why let it die a cold and mouldy death in the fridge when it can so easily be transformed into a superb supper?


Dan getting the last strand of spaghetti

Mr. Brodo, Mr. Brodo!

From Monday to Wednesday this week, I had a much-needed three days off work, and decided that it really was time to do one of those time-consuming recipes for stock from Cooking in Advance that require hours of boiling.

204. Italian Broth

This one's not quite as time-consuming as the consommé (coming soon), as it only takes three hours to boil, and not seven. Nigella says it "provides a fragrant liquid base for tortellini or gnochetti di semolino (see below) or any other manner of culinary punctuation... It is also, pre-eminently, designed to make divine risotti".

The recipe says to boil a beef flank, 2 ossobuchi and a chicken carcass in water with assorted vegetables for three hours, skimming every hour, and a few times in between. I didn't know what a beef flank was, but I googled it, and discovered that it's a tough yet flavoursome, cut of beef. I was sick of asking my butcher for weird cuts of meat, so I just used the spindly bits of frozen oxtail that have been sitting in my freezer for the past few months.




Boiled

Then it's just a matter of straining it and letting it get cold so you can skim off the fat. I made this on Tuesday, and left it in the fridge until Thursday night, which is when I planned to eat it.

But how to serve it? I was definitely going to take Nigella’s suggestion and make the semolina gnocchi, but that wouldn’t be enough for a whole meal. So I decided to make a risotto as well. I've already made all the risotti recipes in How to Eat (2 mushroom, 1 pea), and even though they were all delicious, I wanted a risotto that wasn't too strongly flavoured, so as to show off the flavour of the broth. I've heard rave reviews of Nigella's Ligurian Risotto (from her "At My Table" column in the New York Times), and decided that that one would be perfect.

Back to the broth... this is what it looked like on Thursday evening.


Solid fat - mmm... tasty. I removed the fat with a lot of kitchen paper. Then I put it on the stove to heat up as I made the gnochetti.

205. Gnocchetti di Semolino (Cooking in Advance, even though they don't need to be cooked in advance)

I'm not really a huge fan of the traditional potato gnocchi that you get in restaurants, I always find them dense, heavy and filling, and they sit uncomfortably in my stomach for hours afterwards. However, of these potato-free gnocchi, Nigella says that "these are light, puffy things", so I wasn't too apprehensive. It's hot milk, with semolina whisked in, followed by an egg yolk, butter, parmesan cheese, nutmeg and a whisked up egg-white.


gnocchetti mixture

Then you just drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture into the hot broth, and let them cook. (They're done once they rise to the surface). Nigella says they take 10 minutes, but I found that they took much less time. They looked pretty messy. I suppose you could go all fancy and make quenelle shapes, but I don't really see the point because the mixture is quite sloppy and difficult to work with anyway.


gnocchetti

I let my family eat the soup at the table, while I ate mine at the stove, busily preparing the risotto. The gnocchetti were really good! They were light and puffy, and the cheese gave them a lovely, salty flavour, which is so much better than the bland shite gnocchi that I'm used to. And the soup itself was heartwarming and nourishing.


Soup

So the ligurian risotto is very simple - just an ordinary risotto with pecorino cheese grated in at the end, and served with fresh basil and toasted pinenuts.


Risotto


Ligurian Risotto

It was beautiful! And I think it was the right risotto to show off the home made broth. I have about 1.5 litres of the stock leftover, which I've frozen, so I'll be able to make another risotto with it. Woohoo!

I couldn't get a lardon

183. Linguine with Lardons (One & Two)

Linguine. Bacon. Oil. Garlic. Parsley.



Yeah baby, yeah!

I'm baaaaaack!

Hello all! I had my last exam today, thank God!! The plans for the 3 month holiday are simply to cook, blog, sleep and go out. Sounds good to me!

I haven't been blogging for the past two weeks, but I have kept track of what I've been cooking and eating. So, enjoy!

Thursday, 10th November

Ok, this is the first day of my break from How to Eat recipes. I've put the book on the shelf, I’m in front of the computer, and my Japanese essay is going to get done. I’ve informed my parents of my temporary break from cooking, and put them in charge of feeding us.

As an unexpected bonus, today I receive my three Magnolia Bakery cookbooks from Amazon.com. I've got The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, More from Magnolia and The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook. I'm superexcited, all these gorgeous little cakes!! But at the same time, it's just an extra hundred recipes to add onto my already long list...

Mum makes a nice spaghetti with asparagus and basil pesto (bought from Leo’s supermarket), which I eat alone in front of the computer, with a Nestlé Double Blend Hot Chocolate and my 8th Milo bar of the week.


Asparagus Pesto Pasta, Hot Chocolate and Milo Bar


Friday, 11th November

I was up till 3am last night, and woke up at 9:30 this morning to finish this goddamn essay off, which is due in at 5pm today. At 12:00 noon, though, I miraculously finish the fucker, print it out, and it’s time for lunch. Dad walks in at about this time, asking me what I want for lunch.

Me: Yeah whatever. I don’t care, I’ll eat anything.
Dad: Well I’ll go up to Rendinas and buy some meat ok?

Suddenly my mind, tired and worn out from not enough sleep and too much Japanese, goes into foodie mode…

Me: OH MY GOD, DAD! BUY SOME LAMB RACKS! I’LL MAKE NIGELLA’S CINNAMON LAMB RACKS AGAIN.
Dad: Aren’t you tired? I can grill some steaks, it’s ok.
Me: NO NO NO buy some lamb racks it’s so easy and it will be delicious!
Dad: trying to avoid an argument with his deranged daughter... Yeah ok…

He comes back 20 minutes later, lamb racks in tow (but with some sausages as well, just in case I’ve had a change of heart in the meantime. Clever Dad). I get up from the computer chair, preheat the oven, paint the lamb with cinnamon and chilli oil, chuck them in the oven and make the couscous, without the recipe. It’s not exactly the same as in the book – I put couscous AND a tin of chickpeas into hot stock and leave it to sit, then once it’s cooked, fork through some barberries and pine nuts, which I’ve toasted. Whilst I'm preparing this, Dad grills the sausages, and boils some beans. When he sees me make the couscous, Dad says he doesn’t like couscous, but once it’s all done and on the table, he realizes that this is the only version of couscous that he does like, and has 3rd helpings.




Pretty impressive for something whipped up very impromptu and on very little sleep! I think the fact that I was able to make this without the recipe, and in a very short time frame, proves that this recipe indeed deserves its title as a "Hit" of the Fast Food chapter.

For dinner we go out, then I go out drinking with friends to celebrate the end of this god-awful Japanese subject.


Saturday, 12th November

The first thing I do when I wake up is soak some cannellini beans to make Nigella’s Bean and Pasta soup (Kiddie chapter). The rest of the morning is spent procrastinating, then in the afternoon I realise I have to start studying for next week’s exams.

For dinner, on the suggestion of the lovely Ilana from the Nigella.com forum, I make Nigella’s garlic mushrooms (Kiddie chapter) and pair it with pasta, butter and nutmeg (Fast Food). It only takes about 15 minutes in total, and Ilana was right – it is a perfect meal.

173. Garlic Mushrooms


Garlic Mushrooms + butter/nutmeg pasta

I eat it, with my mum, sitting in front of the TV… and guess what’s on!! NIGELLA BITES! And it’s an episode from the first series, where she makes recipes from How to Eat! SCORE! In this episode, the "Entertaining" episode, she makes chilli and garlic prawns, the mezze-style dinner party, sparkling wine with lime, vagina jelly, loin of pork with bay leaves, guacamole and the Caesar salad. This is good, not only because I love watching the programs, but also because I was confused as to how to make the Caesar salad.

Late at night, I boil the soaked cannellini beans in preparation for making soup tomorrow.


Sunday, 13th November



174. Bean and Pasta Soup (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

When I wake up, I make the bean and pasta soup. However, at the last minute, I realise we again, have run out of tinned tomatoes. So I substitute with a jar of Dolmio basil and tomato pasta sauce, and hope to god that it doesn’t end up tasting like shit.


Bean & pasta soup

Luckily, it tastes fantastic. I have it with some Phillipa’s Corn Bread toast, whilst watching a hilarious episode of I’m Alan Partridge. I’ve forgotten how funny this show is, and remind myself that, one day, I will have Steve Coogan’s babies.


Monday 14th November

Whilst surfing the internet, I happen to stumble across a photo of this love-rat I used to be obsessed with, instantly feel totally depressed and decide that the only solution is ice-cream.

I forage the freezer, and end up with a bowl of Nigella’s World’s Best Chocolate Ice-cream, her Rhubarb Ice-cream and some Connoisseur Chocolate Honey-Nougat Ice-cream, with two Hobnob biscuits. It sounds like my idea of heaven in a bowl, but I'm just not feeling it.




Tuesday 15th November

I spend the entire day in the library with my best friend An, have lunch at about 12, then get back to the library. By 5pm, I haven't got hungry again, and realise something must be very wrong. Usually I get hungry every 3 hours. Usually I eat twice the amount An eats. Usually I spend the whole day dreaming about food. I don't know what's wrong. Maybe it's because I'm still thinking about that Love Rat. In the evening, I also happen to have a mini drama with someone else I was sort of involved with. Why does this shit always happen at the most inappropriate times?? Or maybe my lack of appetite is due to stress from exams. Either way, it's not good. I hope my appetite comes back tomorrow.


Wednesday 16th November

Having just barely recovered from seeing the Love Rat's photo and my other mini-drama, I somehow manage to study just enough to not totally screw myself for exams. Like yesterday, I spend all day in the library, buy food from a cafe on campus, come home for dinner (made by the parentals), study some more and then collapse in bed. For some reason, I'm still not thinking about food. This is starting to scare me. Sarah losing her appetite is worse than Samantha from Sex and the City losing her sex drive.


Thursday 17th November, Friday 18th November

I have exams on both these days. Don't talk to me.


Saturday 19th November

Two exams down, only one to go.

MY APPETITE IS BACK! THANK GOODNESS!

For dinner I feel like pasta, and want to make the garlic mushrooms again, but don’t wanna eat the exact same thing again. So, I make the garlic mushrooms, as per usual, but I decide toss the carbonara sauce (minus cream and bacon) through the pasta. I want to sprinkle it with parsley after it’s done, but the parsley which I bought prior to the exam period seems to have died a horrible horrible death in my fridge, so I leave it out.


Sauce, wine, minging parsley

Whilst I'm cooking the mushrooms, I accidentally knock the bottle of wine onto the floor. Thankfully, the bottle doesn't break, and only a little bit of wine is spilled. But as I smell the wine, I think sadly to myself what I'd give to just take a couple of gulps of that wine. Aaahh... but any dreams of drunkenness will have to wait until after exams...

Nigella says you don’t need cream, but I think she’s wrong. The egg sauce tastes, well, too eggy, and even though it’s delicious whilst I eat it, as soon as I’m done my mouth just tastes of egg, and I need buckets of water to wash out the taste.


Mushroom Carbonara - tastes infinitely better than it looks


Sunday 20th November

Come lunchtime, I feel like pasta again, so I make Nigella’s Spaghetti Aglio Olio, which I’m pretty sure I’ve made before, so doesn't count as a new recipe. I obviously haven’t had time to go and buy new parsley, so it ends up looking pretty boring. Tastes amazing though.


Spaghetti Aglio Olio

Come 7:30pm, marketing theories have fried my brain, and I can't think of food. I send Dad out to Colombo's to get some disgustingly greasy food - capriciossa pizza, a chicken parmigiana, and potato skins (aka soggy wedges) with sour cream, cheese and bacon.




Chicken Parma


Wedges

Man, this stuff is greasy. But it tastes so good! Can't wait for tomorrow night, when all exams are done!

So that was my two weeks without blogging!! I'm definitely back now, with a venegeance! Get ready for heaps of posts!

xox Sarah

You can't have a dinner party without a melon baller!

I had a slightly impromptu dinner with three mates from work tonight. It was “slightly impromptu” because we’d sorta kept the night free for a potential dinner but hadn’t actually made concrete arrangements. And some people are decidedly difficult to get in contact with thanks to their shitty phone reception! It took a whole day of MSN Messenger chats, missed calls, voicemails and text messages to tell them, "Meet at my house at 7:30pm for dinner!". But by this stage it was 6:20pm... and I hadn't been food shopping yet!

I'd planned a repeat of the lemon linguine and the gooey chocolate puddings from the Fast Food chapter, based on the fact that two of my mates don't eat meat or alcohol, and that everybody seems to like chocolate. But stepping out of the house at 6:25pm into the sweltering heat, I realised that a 30 degree day is no day for hot chocolate puddings. So I changed it to a tropical fruit salad, which Nigella suggests serving with butterscotch sauce, from the Weekend Lunch chapter.

172. Butterscotch Sauce

When Dad and I got to Coles, I decided to only put good fruits into my fruit salad - mango, rockmelon, strawberries, pineapple and kiwi fruit. For too many years I've suffered the crap fruit salad - chock full of oranges and apples, with just a couple of strawberry halves for decoration. No longer! I wanted each bite to be filled with deliciousness, and no disappointing filler.

When I came home, I cut up all the fruits and stashed them in the fridge to get super cold. While cutting them up, I put the water on to boil for the pasta. Then I made the sauce, for which you just lazily stir everything together, before tossing it through the pasta.


Pasta on patio

It was such a lovely night that we ate outside... which was great, until we got devoured by mosquitos! Argh!

So we moved inside while I made the butterscotch sauce, and stayed there to eat the dessert. The butterscotch sauce is brown and caster sugars, golden syrup and butter, simmered for 5 minutes, then with cream and vanilla extract added. It smells great but is so super sweet! It was nice, but probably unnecessary, especially considering that my fruit salad was quite fantastic.


Fruit Salad and butterscotch sauce


Fruit Salad, vanilla ice-cream and butterscotch sauce

Best... Fruit Salad... Ever!

Shepherd's Spaghetti

The Shepherd's Pie recipe rocks. I used it as a spaghetti sauce last night, and it was wonderful.

I came home from work last night at 7pm , with no plans to cook, to discover my mother and brother hanging about at home, with no dinner on the table and no idea as to how to get it there. I really think I'm spoiling them with all this cooking. But not to worry, as long as I don't have to do the dishes, I don't give a shit.

I opened the fridge, and came across this huge chunk of lamb from Wednesday night's dinner...


Leftover lamb

I'd eaten some of it before , just microwaved... but after three nights in the fridge, it was no longer able to be eaten straight up. It was time for Shepherd's Pie.

I've made both of Nigella's shepherd's pie recipes before - she has one which you make from cooked meat, and one which you make from raw minced meat. I made them both with beef, and incorrectly still called them "Shepherd's Pie", when they should have been called "Cottage Pie", just because I think "Shepherd's Pie" sounds better. I also thought that I wouldn't have the time or opportunity to try the recipe with different meats so there'd be no point in being accurate with the naming. Silly Sarah! This is a Nigella book. Of course you're gonna end up with heaps of leftover cold roast meats in the fridge. Tsk tsk.

But being the anal-retentive that I am, I now sincerely regret the incorrect nomenclature. This is coming from the girl who pronounces Italian pasta dishes in the correct way at restaurants (spaghetti bo-lo-nies-eh, not "bolonaise"); says "foccace" instead of "focaccias"; who corrects bad grammar on memos from managers ("their" instead of "there" really gets my goat); and who stubbornly said all of the titles of the foreign films we showed at my last cinema in their original language, despite continued baffled looks from our patrons.

I probably won't be able to sleep tonight.

Anyway, back to the food. I whizzed up the vegetables (carrots, onion, garlic and parsley) very finely in a processor, and cooked them until soft in a pan, before mincing up the meat in the same processor and chucking that in the pan. Then, as per the recipe, I added semolina, tinned tomatoes and some milk. As it was simmering slowly, I took a quick shower, came back to the kitchen, cooked some pasta, and dinner was ready. I followed Nigella's tip (from the Lemon Linguine in Weekend Lunch) of getting the pasta water to the boil and then turning off the heat slightly in advance - i.e. before I took my shower. That way, when I came out the water took hardly any time to come to the boil again and dinner could be on the table faster!


Shepherd's Spaghetti

Served with grated pecorino, chilli oil and chilli flakes, this was the perfect reward for a tiring day.

Cena in Bianco

You’ll all be ecstatic to hear that I finished my marketing assignment today, and handed it in, giving me the afternoon and evening free to do whatever I wanted. So, I went to Prahran Market with the parentals, and finally got some clams, with the aim of making Nigella's linguine alle vongole. (And the clams I got were actually labelled "vongole", so I knew I was getting the right stuff... none of this "pippies" bullshit).

I made the white tiramisu last night whilst cooking the chicken and morels, as it has to sit in the fridge overnight. The white tiramisu, preceeded by the linguine alle vongole (served white, or in bianco, as Nigella insists) came together to form our dinner, our cena in bianco.

156. Linguine alle Vongole (One & Two)
157. White Tiramisu (Cooking in Advance)

The white tiramisu serves 4-6, so I halved the quantities (as per usual) for us. It goes in layers - savoiardi biscuits soaked in milk and Bacardi, then a mixture of mascarpone, sugar, egg yolks and whisked egg whites, some crushed meringues, more soaked biscuits, and finally more mascarpone mixture. Nigella says to save a third of the cream, only spreading it over when serving, along with some meringue coins. However, with my halved amounts, it was difficult enough to get two layers of cream (even in a small dish). So into the fridge it went last night, fully assembled except for the meringue coins.

Whilst the tiramisu is prepared in advance, the linguine has to be prepared at the last minute. The cooking process of the clams is pretty much the same as the moules marinière, except without onions, with some dried chilli peppers and, obviously, cooked pasta.

The recipe serves one, and Nigella suggests 150 grams of linguine - that's crazy talk, I tell you!! 100 grams of pasta per person is plenty (I know this from extensive experience of making Nigella pasta dishes). So I just doubled the recipe for myself and my parents. (My brother's at work, so he misses out on the pasta, the poor sod).


I love pot!


Big bowl of vongole


Bowl of linguine - take note of the Living Kitchen salt pig in the background

I really don't need to describe the linguine - just know that everything Nigella writes about it is absolutely true, and that you must make it as soon as possible.

Check...
- How to Eat, One & Two, p. 137
- Forever Summer, First Course, p. 44
- Feast, Ultimate Feasts, p. 346

And here is my, terribly clumsily "decorated" white tiramisu. The recipe says to use 2cm meringue coins - and I was using these big 10cm meringue nests from a packet. (Leftovers from the Quickly-scaled Mont Blanc.) I probably could have broken them up finer, thus making them look less like a 2-year old's art project, but meh, we wanted to eat it straight away.


White Tiramisu - Are we totally loving the 1970's bowl?


Halfway through - I'd say it's more yellow than white, but whatever.


One serving.

Oh wow!! This tiramisu is amazing!! It's so easy, and serious dinner party material. (But only if decorated less stupidly). We loved it, and it was a genuine struggle saving a portion for my brother. Ordinarily, my parents are very self-sacrificing, saying things like "oh no, you kids go ahead", but tonight, I had to forcibly remove the tiramisu from the table to prevent my parents from eating it all and leaving none for my brother.

On an aside, my cousin Ricky’s specialty is spaghetti alle vongole. I've never tried his version, (he lives in Malaysia), but I've heard good things, especially from my niece and nephew, Darren & Cheryl. I remember once, Dad gave Darren and Cheryl's mum a phone call when Ricky happened to be making his spaghetti alle vongole for them...

ring ring...
Darren: Hello!
Dad: Hello, is this Darren?
Darren: Hello koo kong! (Koo kong = Grand-uncle in Hokkien)
Dad: How are you? What are you doing?
Darren: Uncle Ricky's cooking!
Dad: Ooh, is he cooking spaghetti vongole?
Darren: No, spaghetti clam!


Dad, his nephew Ricky, and his nephew Darren - Together in Kuala Lumpur last year


Darren! Awww....