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

My New Year's Gift To You

Now this, my friends, is the kind of salad you want to have in your back pocket, so to speak.  It is possibly the dish I have served to the most people, over my lifetime, and have noticed that it is both an excellent, rock solid standard, and a game changer - people wolf this down, and on more than one occasion I've had someone turn to me, cheeks stuffed full of new potato, eyes wild, and declare "but how can this be?  I don't even like potato salad".

I do claim an unfair advantage on this one, it's true - I come to it from a place of love.  Just as I'm convinced that the perfect roast potatoes can only be made by cooks who love them above all over things (in our house, it's Andy's job for this very reason - I'm definitely a mash girl, and boy do my roasties know it), so I believe the same is true of potato salad.  It's long been a true favourite of mine, and I remember a million years ago at university when my mum gave me some money for groceries and told me to make sure I bought a treat, potato salad was the thing I went for.

The secret is definitely in the dressing, and in particular, the white wine vinegar which isn't the most obvious ingredient, it's true, but it does amazing trickery in adding some tang and background flavour.

I have given you catering-size quantities, that's undeniable, but one taste of this and you will know why.  Whether you're feeding a crowd or just feeding yourself, this is comforting and fresh and tastes of summer.  Keep it in the fridge and dip into it as and when.  You will thank me, and so will all those in your life who are languishing in some misguided potato salad denial.

Potato Salad
My own recipe, developed through years of delicious experimentation

1kg new potatoes, with the peel still on
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon grainy mustard
1 cup mayonnaise
1 bunch spring onions, finely chopped
Handful chives, chopped
Handful fresh mint, chopped
Salt and pepper

Keep the smallest potatoes whole, and cut the larger ones in half so they are all approximately the same size.  Put them in a large pan, cover with cold water, add salt, and bring to the boil.  Boil gently for 15 minutes, until a knife slides easily in to a potato with no resistance.

While the potatoes are cooking, mix the vinegar, olive oil and mustard until emulsified.  Season with a good pinch of salt.

Drain the potatoes well and put into a large bowl.  Immediately, while they are still hot, pour over the vinegar dressing.

Cover, and leave to cool completely.

Before serving, mix together the herbs and the whites of the spring onions with the mayonnaise.  Stir this through the potatoes, making sure to stir through any vinaigrette that's lurking at the bottom of the bowl.  Check for seasoning and add any salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Put into your serving bowl, sprinkle over the spring onion greens, smile, sit back and wait for the conversions.

Serves 8

Getting Organised - Bread Sauce

Ten years ago, I did a post-graduate diploma in a subject intended to help my then career.  Part of the diploma was peer-reviewed, and had to be a practical working example of how organised we'd become since starting the course.  Truth time: I've never been renowned for my organisational skills, with the major exception of food.  Like most other people blessed with the food-obsessive gene, if I start thinking about dinner the second I wake up, I already consider that a second too late.  The working example I brought in was the hefty ring binder used by Mum and I every Christmas to do our food planning.

It really is a thing of wonder and one of the things, people aside of course, that I miss the most now I live here.  We'd routinely cook for no less than 10 people, and loved every second of it.  The ring binder held shopping lists, make-ahead lists, photocopied recipes from books that were tattily past their best, and past menus.

Here, our Christmases are quieter, tending to be just the two of us (which actually, for now, is just the way we like it), but we still can't quite break away from the Great British Christmas dinner, even if we do now cook the turkey on the barbecue, last year in 30 degree temperatures.  Still, I can't shake the need to get organised and start everything that can be started nice and early, to be stashed in the freezer, fridge or pantry and served up on December 25th.

So. Bread Sauce.  Not the flashiest name, admittedly, and not even the flashiest sauce.  Its roots are medieval, and it feels like it, not because it tastes dated, but because it is so, so good that as you dollop it on to roast turkey or roast chicken, the scent of cloves, bay and nutmeg so tantalising, that you can understand how it has become such a staple.

I can understand that if you haven't grown up eating it, the concept might be odd, but every year I am torn between persuading people to try it, ever to be converted, or keeping schtum and having the gloriousness, all to myself.  Oh, and it's just fabulous on the mandatory leftover sandwich.  It freezes perfectly, and only needs thawing and gentle reheating, on the big day.  I used leftover baguette this year, and I love the silkiness the texture of that bread gives, but it is just as good made with any good white bread.

But, since I am sharing only a recipe and not my actual bread sauce, give this a go.

Bread Sauce
A Traditional Recipe

1 unsliced white loaf, or 1 baguette
1 litre full-fat milk
2 tablespoons cream
1 onion, peeled and quarter
4 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon peppercorns
freshly grated nutmeg
salt
30g butter

A couple of hours, at least, before you start the sauce, remove the crusts from the bread (you don't need to be too diligent about this), slice thickly and leave to go stale.

Meanwhile, stud each onion quarter with a clove and put them in a pan with the milk, cream, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt and a good grating of fresh nutmeg.  Over a medium heat, bring nearly to the boil but don't let actually boil.  Put the lid on the pan, and leave it to cool down and infuse with the spices.

You can do both these stages a day before you want to make the sauce.

Fish the onion and spices out of the pan.  Tear the bread into chunks and drop them into the milk.  The bread will swell, soften and break up in the sauce.

If you want to freeze it, do so at this stage.  If you want to serve it straight away, gently reheat it, and, just before serving, stir through the butter until it melts.

If you have frozen your sauce, defrost it and then reheat gently, stirring the butter through as above.

Serve with roast turkey or roast chicken, or with leftover sandwiches.  Decide for yourself whether you want to share.

Serves 10.

Regression Therapy - Malt Loaf

God, I love Soreen so much.  While I wouldn't go so far as to claim it as a universal-to-UK experience, having either a couple of crumpets or a couple of slices of squidgey, dark malt loaf spread with salted butter on the return from school, sofa pulled up to the fire and Jonny Briggs on the tv would certainly be something that would ring a lot of bells with my generation.

When we were challenged to make a sweet or savoury loaf for this month's Bake Club, malt loaf leapt unbidden into my mind, and once it was there, there was no shifting it.  Soreen can't be bought here and so, if I wanted malt loaf, I was going to have to make malt loaf.

It required a fair bit of detective work but eventually I discovered malt extract was available for sale here in NZ and, what's more, it inspires the same kind of nostalgia that I have over malt loaf.  I'm not sure exactly what it is about malt - sweet yet wholesome at the same time, the throat-nudging granularity of barley taking the edge off the sugar hit - but combine that with juicy sultanas and you have an after-school, after work, or just after anything, feast fit for a king.

This recipe makes two loaves and, trust me, if you can leave it a few days after making it, well wrapped up, it will reward your patience a hundredfold as the stickiness and maltiness increase, day on day.

This has to be served with salted butter; actually, more specifically, it has to be served with Lurpak.

Malt Loaf
from BBC Good Food

150ml hot black tea (1 tea bag will be enough)
175g malt extract, plus extra for glazing
85g muscovado sugar
50g raisins
250g sultanas
2 large eggs, beaten
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
0.5 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Preheat your oven to 150c.  Grease and line two 1lb loaf tins with baking paper.

Mix the tea, malt, sugar and fruit until fully combined and the fruit has started to swell a little in the liquid.  Stir in the eggs.

Mix in the flour, baking powder and bicarb.  Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins.  Bake for 50 minutes.

When they are just out of the oven, dip a pastry brush (silicone if possible, for cleaning reasons) into your tin of malt extract and use it to glaze the top of the loaves, which will become gloriously sticky.

When they're completely cool, wrap well in foil and leave for 2-5 days until at sticky perfection.

Makes 2 loaves

Our Own Interests - Celery and Chard Gratin

Every so often, Andy or I tentatively suggest a new outing, a new hobby, a new interest, to see if the other would be up for joining in.  "I see they're doing salsa lessons down on the waterfront this summer" we casually throw into the conversation.  "I see Dolly Parton is playing up in Auckland".  "I'm thinking of starting a book club".  "I want to go to the gaming exhibition at Te Papa".

(Three of those were mine, one was Andy's, and I'm not telling which).

At this point the other will start looking wildly round them, clutching at their hair and clutching at straws, until we come up with the ultimate safe get-out clause.

"I think it's important that we have our own interests".

Seriously - that line has got both of us out of more socially-induced awkwardness than anything else.  A real relationship saver, and I selflessly offer it up to you to use as you wish.

Celery, I would say, is my own interest.  Andy is definitely happy to palm that one off on me.  I go through a fair bit of it, it's true, as the basis of most soups, stews, sauces, but that does mean that there's usually a few sticks, looking limply folorn every time I open the fridge.  And as there's only me to eat it - strictly my own interest, you might say - I love finding new ways to use it up.

This recipe, inspired by an Ottolenghi article in The Guardian, is great, with the proviso that you really, really do have to like celery to enjoy it.  As much as I agree with him that it is often unfairly maligned, there is no escaping the fact that this is a very celery-ish dish.  The lemon in it was incredible though, and lifted the whole thing out of the ordinary.  And let's not forget that topping - almost 50% parmesan.  No arguments from me on that front, whatsoever.

I will keep this as my little secret.

Celery and Chard Gratin

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi

4 celery stalks, trimmed and chopped but not too small
1 bay leaf
1 lemon, half the zest taken off in strips with a peeler, the rest of the zest grated
300ml milk
280g silverbeet (Swiss Chard), leaves shredded, stalks trimmed and chopped
1 tablespoon butter
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 slice wholemeal bread, grated or blitzed into breadcrumbs
Handful parsley, chopped
40g parmesan, grated

Preheat your oven to 180c/350f

Simmer the celery, bay leaves, and lemon zest strips in the milk for about 12 minutes, until soft.  Strain and reserve the milk (you should have about 200ml left after simmering).  Set the celery to one side; discard the bay and lemon zest.

Clean the pan (I used my non-stick frying pan but it is coming to the end of its days and non-stick isn't so much a misnomer any more as a downright dirty lie), using as much elbow grease as your pan requires.

Fill your clean pan with water, bring to a boil, and add the chard stalks.  Cook for 2 minutes, add the chard leaves, and cook for another minute.  Drain and dry well.

Wipe the pan again so it's dry.  Melt the butter over a medium heat.  Saute the drained chard for a couple of minutes, then add the celery.

Add the flour and stir for a minute or so to cook it out.  Gradually stir in your reserved milk, lemon zest, and the juice from your lemon until you have a thick coating of sauce for the vegetables.

Put this mixture into a smallish gratin dish.

Mix the breadcrumbs with the parsley and parmesan.  Pour this topping on top of the vegetables, and bake for 30 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and the top is crunchy and golden.

Don't serve this immediately out of the oven; instead, leave it 10 minutes or so.
 
Serves 4 as a smallish side or 2 as the highlight dish.

Eat Your Greens - Broccoli Pesto

What's your favourite vegetable?  Are there some that you just won't touch, even under pain of terrible things?  I was musing the other day and I can't think of one vegetable that I don't adore which, I'm sure you'll agree, even for an indecisive omnivore is taking things a bit Too Far.

It does mean, though, that when I head down to the Harbourside Market on a Sunday morning, after I have a nosy wander round the stalls, but before I indulge in the best breakfast in Wellington, bar none (Masala Dosa from the Brahman - $10 of pure happiness and therefore worth every cent), I do tend to get overexcited and completely overestimate the amount of vegetables that we need for just the two of us (and just the one of me, really, on the three nights a week that Andy works).

I am never averse to simply-cooked vegetables, cooked till just al dente (except my secret food shame, overcooked cabbage), but when I have such a volume to get through, I have to get a bit creative with what I do with them.

This Broccoli Pesto came about on just such a night.  I was musing that I was keen for summer to start for a million and one reasons, one of them being my basil would grow and, if all goes to plan, I will have enough this year for a regular supply of pesto.  Until then, until then... what could I do?  My eyes fell on a head of broccoli, a seemingly everlasting reminder of my market profligacy.

Par boiled so it has still got plenty of crunch, colour and texture, then mixed with the pesto classics, parmesan, garlic and pine nuts, a good handful of parsley and some cream to bind, this has the beautiful grassy flavour of broccoli combined with the nubbliness of pesto.

Use it on it's own, or use it as I did as the base of a pasta dressing with peas and bacon, just use it.  Because you need to eat your greens, you know.

Broccoli Pesto

1 head broccoli
20g parmesan, grated
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 handful parsley
2 tablespoons cream
salt and pepper

Chop the broccoli into florets, then chop the stalk into one inch pieces.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil, and parboil the broccoli stalks for 2 minutes, adding the florets after one minute.  Drain well.

In a food processor, blitz the pine nuts, garlic, parsley, oil and salt and pepper until the nuts have been ground but there are still a few larger bits left - this is important for texture.

Add the broccoli and pulse until mostly broken down into small pieces.

Add the parmesan and cream and pulse until well combined.

When you use it, retain a cupful of the cooking water from the pasta.  Use this to 'loosen' the pesto when you add it to the pasta, stirring through a spoonful at a time until it melds into the sauce and it coats the pasta easily.

This pesto freezes very well.

Serves 4

A Dish to Remember - Piperade

I'm blessed with a good memory.  Exams, as long as I can learn the subject by rote, have never been too taxing.  I'm sure I exasperate my husband with my ability to remember every. little. thing.  But when it comes to food, I'm Rainman.  Along with the list of Andy's likes and dislikes that I have committed to memory, I have freaked my friends out with my tendency to have conversations like:

 "I know you miss Marks & Spencer Smoked Mackerel Pate, so I've made you some". 

 "When did I tell you that?"

 "Three years ago, in passing in a conversation".

One friend doesn't like eggs, one doesn't like parsnips, one doesn't like cooked apple.  You get the idea.  It can make catering for groups of them an exercise in elimination, rather than blissfully picking one thing and sticking to it.

The same applies for recipes.  I have an uncanny recall of recipes I've read just once, let alone a few times.  So when it comes to a book I have probably read, cover-to-cover, novel style, more than any other, it's no wonder I can virtually recite the index from memory.  Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course was the first 'grown up' cookery book I owned just for me, rather than borrowing from Mum.  It was a gift as I headed off to university - and what a gift.  I still recommend it to this day for people just setting off on the cooking journey.  Delia holds your hand through this in an informative, slightly strict at times, no-nonsense fashion, and I for one am still reaping the rewards.  Back in the days, before laptops and internet invaded student halls, there was just me and this book, and I read it, and read it, and read it.

So when I woke up this morning, and the word "Piperade" jumped into my head, I wasn't especially surprised, even though I'd never cooked it before.  I knew it contained eggs and peppers, both of which I had lying around.  I also had all the other ingredients, and so made it for a brunch.  Very glad I did; the sweetness of the slow-cooked vegetables makes the eggs incredibly sweet and creamy.  My young, grown-from-seed basil is aniseed-strong, and was a great highlight to the eggs.  

I'll be remembering this one for the future.

Piperade
Adapted from Delia Smith, 'Complete Illustrated Cookery Course'

1 onion, finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
1 tomato, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 eggs
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
A few basil leaves
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil and butter in a medium pan over a low heat.  Add the onion and cook for about 10 minutes, until soft but not brown.

Add the pepper, tomato and garlic, and continue to cook slowly for another 20 minutes, until the vegetables are sweet and soft.  Season well with salt and pepper

Beat the eggs well then add them to the pan, stirring constantly.  After a couple of minutes, before they are firm, remove from the heat and continue to stir for 30 seconds.

Serve over toast or, as I did, a grilled field mushroom.  Garnish with basil and serve immediately.

Serves 2