Alchemy - Pasta Bianco

I have a very addictive personality, which is why I don't let myself do certain things.  And in my case, 'addictive personality' is totally a euphemism for 'complete lack of willpower'.  Things that I like, I really, really like - I'm the ultimate page-turner, leaving the carpets shamefully un-vacuumed and the shelves woefully un-dusted until I have torn through the latest book I'm reading.  If I find a new tv programme that hooks me in, I want to race through the entire series until it ends and I come to my senses, room darkened, not certain if I'm looking out at twilight or dawn.

That's why I give a wide berth to those things like Candy Crush Saga that I keep getting invitations to.  Not going to go there.  Farmville?  Not for me.  I know, with an unshakeable certainty, that I would lose weeks I could barely afford to those things.  I'm filled with admiration for people who can play the odd game or two and walk away, but for me, it would go the way of my ill-advised Sims adventures, and end with the point where it starts to invade my dreams.

There is one exception to this rule, and it's something I love but can happily walk away from.  Called Little Alchemy, it's one of those ingeniously simple (or simply ingenious?) ideas that's a great way to while away a few minutes here and there, without desending into addiction.  It's based on the idea that you combine two elements to make other elements, and is much more fun than I've managed to make it sound.

I've recently discovered the food equivalent of Alchemy.  It consists of four ingredients - well, five, if you count the pasta water (and believe me, this is where the magic happens).  It is the absolute definition of being greater than the sum of its parts.  The ingredients, I'd be willing to guess, you have in your house right now, and if that's the case - well, what are you waiting for?  So simple, but please, don't let that fool you.  They combine into something unctuous and startling, and nothing short of magical.  This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver, but I've seen it cropping up all over the place, sometimes with the garlic, usually called something along the lines of Pasta with Butter and Cheese (does what it says on the tin!).  I like the name Pasta Bianco though, White Pasta, deceptive, like the dish itself in its simplicity.

I've had it twice this week already, and I'm trying to work out when I can next get my fix.  Can you spot my new addiction?

Pasta Bianco
Adapted from Jamie Oliver, Jamie's Dinners

100g spaghetti or linguine
30g butter, preferably unsalted but don't let only having salted put you off making this
20g parmesan, finely grated.  You don't really need to weigh this, just estimate as big as your thumb, and count yourself lucky if you've got big thumbs.
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper

That tiny pile of ingredients?  All you need to make magic happen.

Put a large pan of water on to boil, and salt very generously.  When it is at a rolling boil, add the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions - my linguine took 11 minutes.

While it is cooking, take a small pan and, over a low heat, melt your butter.  Crush the garlic, or grate it using a fine grater, and add it to the butter.   Cook gently, without browning, for a few minutes.  Remove from the heat.

When the pasta is cooked how you like it, and this is the important bit, before you drain it dip a cup into the water and remove a scoop of the starchy water.

Drain the pasta.  Put the garlic and butter into the pan that you cooked the pasta in.  Add the pasta back, and give it a good stir.  Add about half the parmesan, stir it round, then follow by a tablespoon or so of the water.  See how the consistency changes?  The water combines with the butter and cheese to make a creamy sauce.  Add the rest of the parmesan, save a small spoonful, and another spoonful or so of the water, until it is a glossy-looking sauce that coats the pasta easily.  Season well with salt and pepper.

Turn into a bowl and top with the small amount of remaining parmesan.

Eat, and marvel at the wonder of alchemy.  Ours is not to reason why.

Serves 1

Pork Rillons

To be fair, all the signs were there from the start.

Sign 1

I didn't actually know which recipe I was supposed to be making.  Dom, over at Belleau Kitchen challenged us for this month's Random Recipe blog to go to our cuttings & clippings heap neatly filed, well-organised folder.  I gleefully grabbed mine, and said to Andy "right, I'm just going to throw them all on the floor! And then we'll pick!" "Noooooooooooo" came the reply, moving towards me like some slow-mo action hero.  We're trying to keep the house a bit show-homeish at the moment, you see, what with the landlords popping round all the time to do the DIY necessary to sell the house.  Fun times.  Anyway - instead of me giving this place a new carpet of recipes, Andy rifled through the file until I said stop.  And here is the first sign - the piece of paper he dubiously handed me had four different recipes on.  All French, all country-esque, 75% of them the kind that would take me flipping hours and then Andy wouldn't really like anyway.  In all honesty I couldn't remember which one of the recipes had tempted me enough to rip it out of the Jamie magazine, so I went for the one that looked like we would both enjoy.  Looked like.

Sign 2

Pork Rillons, the recipe I went for, are - you've guessed it - yet another pork recipe.  Any suggestion that round here we are one pork meal away from turning porcine ourselves would, frankly, be accurate.  It turns up quite a lot round here.  We are both, in short, heartily sick of pork at the moment.  So picking yet another gratuitous pork recipe?  Sign two.

Sign 3

The recipe suggests serving this dish with 'a lively Sancerre'.  

Sign 4

This recipe takes flipping hours.  You have to start it the night before, salting cubes of pork belly.  Then you have to fry and slow cook the pork belly.  Then you have to leave it to cool.  Then you reheat it.  Flipping.  Hours.  For a flipping (and I quote) 'snack'.  A snack, FYI Jamie Oliver and Ed Wilson, from whom the recipe came, is cheese on toast.  An apple.  Yoghurt eaten straight from the pot.  It is not something you have to start the night before.  And yes, I am saying 'flipping' a lot but my Mum reads this blog.  Sometimes.

Sign 5

I had literally no idea just how much 250g of lard looks like, until I measured it out.  Trying to kid myself, I pretended that the fluffy white solids in the bowl were ice cream.  And then I realised I wouldn't even allow myself that much ice cream.  That was the point, sign five, at which I knew we were really in trouble.

Sign 6

Frying cubes of pork belly, skin side down, in some of the aforementioned lard, creates a lot of smoke.  Enough to set off the fire alarm and make your newly-cleaned carpets smell of acrid pig fat.  Oh, and the skin STILL wasn't crisp enough, like some kind of flipping heat-resistant kevlar jacket for the pork.   Every window and door in the place wide open, autumn upon us so not as warm as it has been.  Sign six, right there.

Sign 7

Serving up, after all that time and effort and just flipping everything, what essentially comes down to cubes of flabby pork belly that taste of lard.  Not the promised chic bistro-snack.  I guess that was the biggest sign.  That and the uneaten pork pushed to the side of the plate.  The nicest part of the meal were the green salad and the bread and listen, I am not the sort of person who says that lightly.

Sign 8

We don't eat much pudding day-to-day, but I'd made an apple crumble, on a hunch.  Just in case.  We ate it all. 

So yeah, in the future, listen to the signs.  My sign to you is - DON'T MAKE THE LARD CUBES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  Or if you do, make sure that the green salad and bread are really good, you have apple crumble for afters, and that glass of lively sancerre translates into a whole bottle.  You will need it.

Pork Rillons
From Jamie Oliver magazine

1kg pork belly, bones removed if there are any
50g salt
250g lard
250ml dry white wine (I suggest you use your lively Sancerre and neck the rest from the bottle in a fit of disappointment)
3 bay leaves
1 large sprig thyme
10 peppercorns
4 garlic cloves, halved
125ml water
Green salad and bread to serve (this is important)

The day before you want to eat your snack, plan well ahead.  Cut the pork belly into 5cm cubes, sprinkle with the salt, cover and put in the fridge.

The morning before you want your snack, rinse the salt off the pork and pat dry with kitchen towels.  Over a high heat, fry the cubes of pork belly in a small amount of lard.  Curse the recipe and open the windows.

Heat your oven to 140C.  In one layer in an oven proof dish, put the cubes of pork, the wine, the garlic, thyme, bay, peppercorns, the rest of the lard and the water.

Cook for 1.5 hours until the pork is tender and tastes of lard.

Pour away most of the lardy juice and leave to cool in a small amount of it.

When you are ready to eat your snack, heat your oven to 200C.  Heat the pork for 10 minutes until sizzling.

Leave most of the pork, eat the salad, the bread, and drink the wine.  Realise as you smell the lard lingering in your hair that some recipes remain in your folder, uncooked, for a reason.

Serves - god knows.  Depends on how many lard cubes you will eat, per person.   This made about 16 cubes, so take it from there.

Lentils for the New Year

I love the tradition of eating lentils at the New Year. It ticks so many boxes - it is supposed to be lucky, representing wealth if you take the view that they look like little coins. They are a good vehicle for using up the last of the tenacious Christmas leftovers. They are fantastically healthy, if the predictable January health kick starts as early as the 1st. And they are as cheap as - well, lentils, so helping with the also-predictable austerity measures.

I am somewhat enamoured right now with the website Eat Your Books which acts as a virtual bookshelf. I'm always too scared to count my cookbooks, but know that it is definitely in the three figures arena. Actually, since this year I started my own business working with food, I can tell myself "It's for work, it's for work" (repeat ad infinitum). But the truth is, most of these were bought for me. And, for shame, I am past the tipping point at which I have too many to make searching through them for a specific recipe time-savvy; more often than not I turn to Google. But this website acts as a google for your own books. How incredibly cool is that?

I will be testing it out later this month to find a recipe for the Bake Club that I also started this year, but 1st January, I was all about the lentils. So I typed in, incredibly, 'lentils' (shocker!) and it brought up literally hundreds of recipes that were sitting there on my shelf floor. Most of them, unsurprisingly, were much of a muchness, and no doubt I could have come up with something similar myself, but I'm a sucker for a system that works.  I ended up using a Jamie Oliver recipe that makes big claims in the title ("The most incredible lentils") - don't know if I would go that far but they were just right. Soothing, homely flavours. We had these with sausages (leftover from Christmas Day Pigs in Blankets) and Dauphinoise Potatoes (leftover from Christmas and subsequently frozen), with a couple of florets of broccoli for health. Andy doesn't like lentils as a general rule, but I made him eat a couple for luck.  And since he has been my most constant support through the very up-and-down 2012, I thought it was the least I could do for him. I'm sure he'll thank me one day.

The Most Incredible Lentils
From Jamie Oliver, jamie does...

1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick of celery, peeled and finely chopped
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tablespoon duck fat (I'd normally sub olive oil but I have some leftover from the Christmas Roasties)
250g Puy lentils
0.5 litre turkey stock (any good veggie/chicken stock would do though)
1 potato, peeled and chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Bouquet garni: small bunch thyme, small bunch parsley, 1 bay leaf, tied up in string

In a heavy pan or casserole, heat the duck fat and then add the carrot, celery and onions.  Cook on a medium heat for about 10 minutes until softened but not dark, and when they really start to smell amazing, throw in the bouquet garni and lentils. Give everything a good stir to get the lentils covered in the juices, then add the turkey stock and potato.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 45 minutes until everything is soft. Crush the potatoes and stir them back through the sauce - this helps make the sauce really robust and quite creamy. Remove the bouquet garni, and check the seasoning. Add a splash of both extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, and check the seasoning again.

Eat, while dreaming of the wealth that is sure to head your way during 2013.

Serves 4