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

Veal, Liver and Bacon Mince Pie

This recipe is yet another of Nigella’s tomato and meat sauce recipes, which could be served with rice, on pasta, or in a pie. This one is topped with mashed potato…

206. Veal, Liver and Bacon Mince Pie (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

To make this pie, you need

1) a good butcher
2) a food processor
3) a strong stomach

I have all three, so I was off to a good start.

I got the liver from Rendinas, and it was awesome! I’d never seen a calves’ liver before, and they’re huge! Like seriously, one hundred times larger than a chicken liver. And it was so red and shiny… amazing. The butcher cut off a couple of slices for me, and suggested frying them in a pan with herbs, wine and pepper. Next time, next time.


Liver in bag

You start off by processing up some onion, garlic, carrot, celery and bacon, and cooking it in butter until softened. Then you process the liver and veal in the processor…


Minced – oh my god, possibly the grossest thing I have ever seen.

… and then add it to the pan, before adding flour, cinnamon, bay leaves, tomatoes, and peas. Then you let it simmer until cooked, and stir in some cream at the end.


Filling in pot

I let it cool down a bit, and then put it in a pie dish. There was a bit too much filling for the dish, so I put the remainder into a zip-lock glad bag, and thence into the freezer.
I topped it with the leftover mashed potato from my roast pork lunch, and then shoved the whole lot, covered with foil, into the freezer.


Assembled Pie

Two days later, I took it out, and topped it with butter, parmesan cheese and nutmeg, before baking it in a 190C oven for about 1 hour until it was warmed all the way through.


Baked pie

Awesome pie! As I was cooking it, I was wondering why Nigella needed yet another tomato and meat sauce recipe. But as I was eating it, I understood. It's really delicious, and tastes different from the other ones. I also suppose it would be a good way to get kids to eat liver without their knowing. (But why, why would it be desirable to feed kids liver? I always thought it was really high in cholesterol...)


Pie being eaten

I'm taking the leftovers to work tonight. Sweet!

However, delicious and kiddie-friendly though the finished product may be, I applaud any parent who manages to make their child eat this pie having seen the minced meats that go into it.