Fettucine with lots of veggies

It doesn’t really happen very often that I use a recipe to make pasta. To me it is just the perfect meal when we need something quick, tasty and want to use whatever we have in the fridge or closet. So that is also the way that this fettucini came to live…. It’s hot here at the moment, which I am sure you heard me say on more then one occassion by now. So while perfect for strawberry frozen yogurt or mango icecream; that is not really very sustainable or fit for an evening meal. It’s also not the kind of weather where you would like to stand in the kitchen or near a stove or oven for longer then absolutely necessary. Since I used fresh pasta for this recipe, cooking the pasta is just about 3 minutes and the rest is as easy as can be. Because I used smoked chicken, rather then raw chicken; it’s even quicker to make. I will try and list the ingredients that I used for this pasta but really… it would work with lots of other things as well!

FETTUCINI WITH PEAS, SMOKED CHICKEN AND SUN DRIED TOMATOES (serves 2)

Fresh pasta for two

2-3 sundried tomatoes

3-4 fresh tomatoes, cut into large chunks

1 onion, cut into chunks

1 clove of garlic

roasted bell peppers (about 2)

200 gr peas, frozen (obviously if you have fresh peas, you can use those as well)

handful of rocket

200 gr smoked chicken

garlic pepper, seasalt

Italian herbs (basil mainly)

Parmesan for grating

100 ml of double cream (I think I might have used a little less. It was really just a dash)

Bring your water to a boil and keep at a simmer. You want to have your ingredients done already before cooking the pasta, as that literally takes 3 minutes when using fresh pasta. If using dried pasta with longer cooking times then you might want to cook it straight away, as the preparing of the sauce is very quick.

Cut sundried tomatoes and roasted bell peppers in small strips. Cut the chicken in cubes.

Put a pan on the stove at medium heat and add some oliveoil. Slowly fry the onion until soft, add the garlic and bake for a short while. Ad the chicken and briefly fry before adding the sundried tomatoes and bell peppers. Add the fresh tomatoes and let it simmer shortly until the tomatoes start to fall apart and form a sauce. Once you have that, add the cream and mix. Taste and add Italian herbs, salt and pepper where needed. I’ve used garlic pepper which is great and very tasty. Add the frozen peas at the last minute and warm through.

To serve put the fettucini in a bowl, add a little grated parmesan on top and a handful of rocket.

Enjoy!

Stuffed courgette

Now how very Italian does that title sound?? Sooo much better then stuffed zuchini or stuffed courgette, wouldn’t you agree? I just love the Italian language, even though I have absolutely no idea what they are saying except when they say something useful like ‘ciao’ or arriverderci (which I am probably writing down wrong…) Did I tell you already that we will be leaving for Italy in about four weeks time? I can’t believe it is only 4 weeks away but I am so excited about it. We will be travelling around Tuscany with friends; we decided more or less on a route and we will see where we will end up. Definitely on the list to visit is Florence, but also the coast and obviously I would love to visit some special food related places. Markets, but maybe also little farms that make special produce, cheese, wine, olives and oooo, all that other fabulous stuff that Italy is so well known for! I have been to Italy twice but both only for a very very short time. The first time I visited was years ago and the reason of the visit was work related, so we stayed only one lousy day. I mean, seriously, one day in Italy; that doesn’t even count does it?? We stayed in the town of Mantova, lovely old little town (although I am quite sure it was called Mantova I have recently started to question my memory since I have heard that Mantova is nothing like the Mantova I remember! So forgive me for getting it wrong – maybe)

Mantova by night

But even in that very short time I decided to get up at 5 am to have a walk around town and to see a little bit of Italy. The night before – after work – we did go out for dinner and I even managed to talk some shots of the little church by night as you can see on the left, but it really was far too short.

The second time I went to Italy I went with Jacqueline and I told you a little bit about it here. While we had loads of fun and I got to see a little bit more of Italy, it was only 5 days and most of those were filled with househunting. Plus – if I am being honest – the area of the Gardalake would not be my choice of scenery as I find it too overexploited for tourism. You can still find lovely little markets and lovely little towns in the area, but overall; too much tourism. It’s a fine balance for a country I think between giving in to the lures of tourism and to keeping it’s own identity.

Tuscany in itself is also quite touristic ofcourse; if you ever ask anyone where they are going in Italy then you are bound to hear they are going to Tuscany. Initially we wanted to go to both Tuscany and Umbria but since we are driving ourselves and we did not want to spend most of our holiday in the car, we decided to stick to one provence and maybe explore Umbria next time.

So in reality this is – or at least it feels that way to me – really the first time I am really visiting Italy and even then; Tuscany is just a small part. But it’s a good start!

How did I end up talking about all that; when I started with the lovely Italian dish we had for dinner the other day…

The thing is that we finally bought “The Silver Spoon” (Il cucchiaio d’argento) which is a cookbook featuring about 2000 Italian recipes and is said to be the classic Italian cookbook you have to have… Well, I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that the book – while shockingly not containing many photos – is very useful for when you are looking for a recipe to go with a certain ingredient. It is all listed by ingredient. So have courgette leftover? Look under courgette and you’ll find plenty of suggestions of what to do with them.

So while I cannot tell you yet if all the recipes are good, having tested only one, it does look promising and this particular recipe was definitely worth it!

Making it was a breeze; it just needed some cooking time. When I first read the recipe I would have thought that it was made in the oven, but it is not. But have a try for yourself; I garantuee you it is tasty!

BARCHETTE DI ZUCCHINE RIPIENE (or stuffed courgette/zucchini)

(serves 4)

100 gr ham, cut into strips

2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

1 clove garlic, mashed

50 gr pancetta, chopped

100 gr ground beef

2 tbsp of parmezan, freshly grated

1 egg

4 large courgette cut lengthwise in two

50 gr butter

2 tbsp of oliveoil

1 onion

2 tbsp of passata

salt and pepper

Mix ham, parsley, garlic, half the pancetta, the ground beef, the parmesan and the egg into a bowl with salt and pepper to taste. With a little sharp knife (or use a spoon) cut out the meat from the courgette but make sure to leave the shells intact. Fill them with your meatmixture.

Heat the butter and oliveoil in a wide pan (it will have to fit the courgettes too!), add the onion and the rest of the pancetta and bake for about 5 minutes on low; stir occasionally.  Add the courgette and bake them also for a few minutes.

Mix the passata with 175 ml of warm water and put the mixture in the pan. Add salt, cover and let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes or until the meat is cooked and the courgettes are tender.

Put them in a hot bowl and pour a little of the cooking sauce over the top.

Risotto with chicken, peas and mushrooms

Aha! That was sort of my reaction when I read about the Daring Cooks challenge for this month. The challenge consisted of two parts; first making your own chicken stock from scratch and two, making your own risotto with that stock. Now to be honest; making risotto is not really a challenge as I have done that a zillion times. Just love the stuff…

Making my own stock however was still on the todo list so a perfect challenge at the perfect time! But let’s first start with the necessary lines

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

Naked chicken...

The instructions on the recipe called for using one whole chicken and some chicken bones… Since we normally only eat chicken filets, I didn’t have any leftover bones or carcass of any chicken lying around and neither do we have a butcher nearby so I just used one whole chicken and a couple of chicken legs instead. It worked fine, but I will use leftover bones next time when I make myself a whole chicken (soon to come!)

The chicken first had to be brought to a boil so you could get rid of some of the scum that comes out of the poor animal… I was actually glad I have such a huge souppan. I think I got it from my parents ages ago when I first started living on my own (what where they thinking? It’s large enough to feed an entire crowd..lol) It easily fit the chicken and the legs and after it was brought to a boil and cleaned of a bit, the veggies and spices where added. I was convinced I had cinnamon sticks lying around but I couldn’t find them anywhere so I left those out. Too bad really as I love cinnamon, but not enough apparently to run back to the store. I did brown the onions so that the stock would have a little bit of color.

The whole pot happily bubbled away for about 1,5 hour at which point I had to remove the chicken who was already falling apart. We let it cool of and then plucked all the meat from the bones. Loads of chicken!

The stock we ended up with after about three hours in total of cooking time, was quite substantial too. I didn’t really measure but let’s just say I have a couple of liter of chickenstock in the freezer right now!

So making the stock was pretty straightforward and I love the fact that you can really throw in any kind of leftovers you want. I did find the taste a little bit bland but that is probably due to my lack of adding a few things. Didn’t have the cinnamon and then forgot the allspice… Tsss… I pretty much stuck to the recipe for the stock but I will season it differently for next time. Where I bought a couple of ingredients this time I will not do that next time, but will purely work with leftover stuff. That is the whole point afterall of making stock I think. It’s just perfect for leftovers and bones. But I now know that it is essentially incredibly easy to do, so that is good to know.

So then came the fun part of making the risotto which was the next day. I figured I should use some of the chicken at least in the risotto, so I did that. I don’t particularly like cooked chicken, so I baked them until the were a bit brown and crispy and had a lovely taste.

I had peas in the freezer so I used those, added some mushrooms, put some crumpled baconbits on top as well as parmesan and voila… Beautiful meal! I have to say that the risotto in the photos might look a bit dry but that is because we ate most of it and then I shot the leftovers the day after! So I did reheat it but with risotto that tends to mean that it becomes a bit dryer than it should be. Still very tasty though. Plus I didn’t have any leftover bacon so they photos did without. But adding the bacon is really lovely as it gives a nice crunch to the total.

Due to the fact that the stock was a bit bland I used part of a chicken stock cube to season it a bit as well as some other things I threw in (and can’t remember) but overall delicious meal!

Here are the recipes!

Chicken Stock

Ingredients:
1 large chicken 2-3 pounds about 1 kg
chicken bones 2-3 pounds 1 kg
2 onions, roughly diced

See that huge bowl of stock on the kitchen counter? And don't look at the mess!!

1 medium leek – white part only, roughly diced
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, halved
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. white peppercorns ( Any type of whole peppercorn will do)
2 bay leaves (fresh or dried, it doesn’t matter.)
peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp. allspice

Directions:

1. Wash the chicken and bones and places in a 5 Litre pot, cover completely with water and bring to a boil
2. Skim away any scum as it comes to the surface
3. Add the vegetables and bring back to a boil
4. Add the rest remaining ingredients and simmer very gently, uncovered for 1.5 hours
5. Carefully lift out the chicken, set aside. The chicken meat can be removed from the chicken, shredded off and used for other things like soup!
6. Simmer the stock gently for another hour. At , at the end you should have around 2 Liters
7. Carefully ladle the liquid into a fine sieve, the less the bones and vegetables are disturbed in this process the clearer the stock will be. 
The stock is now ready for use. Freeze what you don’t need for later use.

Risotto Base

Ingredients:
olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
Any type of risotto rice will do. I use Arborio but the recipe itself says Vialone Nano. Another to look for is Carnaroli.
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard. (We diced ours and left it in as we like onion).
2. Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.
3. Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.
4. Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two). Don’t actually stick your finger in, it will be hot. Just eye it off.
5. Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.
6. Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step. .
7. Repeat, save 100ml for the final stage.
8. Once you are at this point, the base is made. You now get to add your own variation.

Tomato bruschetta

It’s been forever since I last cooked something for the Cooking Italy group which is all about the wonderful book “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan. You know how things like that go; in between cooking for the Daring Cooks, the Daring Bakers and various other cooking groups and challenges… it almost seems impossible to keep things up!

The problem is that I like them all, but reality is that I simply cannot do them all. Not all the time anyways… On top of that I had decided to lose weight (whatever happened to that…lol) and figured I could do without rich and creamy pasta sauces for a while. Well, I can tell you that it sure helps to not eat rich and creamy but it doesn’t help if you then end up baking chocolate cakes or other sweet and wonderful goodies! O well, as long as we’re healthy right?

I bumped (yes, bumped… It’s a very large book….lol) into Marcella’s book last week and then figured it was about time I got back into cooking with the group. I totally love her recipes and the two I will share with you today are two prime examples how simple cooking can be soooo rewarding.

The first one is a delicious tomato bruschetta which is just simple and gorgeous all on it’s own. Works perfect as an appetizer, a snack or a light lunch. We had this together with the pasta as there is not a lot of greens in the pasta and I figured that instead of doing a salad I make a nice bruschetta. The bruschetta was on the Cooking Italy schedule even before I started with the group, but I hadn’t made it and I love all bruschetta’s.. so a natural choice!

It amazes me every single time how much flavor you get by simply rubbing a clove of garlic over a toasted piece of bread! The recipe said to spread the garlic over the bread but I tend to find that a bit too overpowering so I rubbed half a clove of garlic over the fresly toasted bread, sprinkled it with olive oil and put the tomatoes on top. Key in this recipe is to use good tomatoes. You do not want the watery type. That will just kill the taste of the bruschetta. So nice tomatoes, whatever variety you have in your area and remove the seeds for the most part and chop them in small pieces, mix with fresh basil and put on top of your warm toasted bread. Add some salt and pepper and you’re done!

And delicious it is!

By the time we got to the pasta it was dark, so not the best light to shoot a pasta dish. The pasta was incredible; there is hardly any ingredients in there and it is still very good and very tasty! You should give it a try!

SAUSAGE AND CREAM SAUCE (serves 4)

225 gr sweet sausage

1,5 tbsp chopped onion

25 gr of butter

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

freshly ground black pepper, salt and freshly grated parmezan for the table

150 ml whipping cream

450 gr of pasta (this sauce benefits from using a pasta shape that traps the sauce well, such as conchiglie or fusili

1. Skin the sausage and crumble it as fine as possible

2. Put the chopped onion, butter and vegetable oil in a small saucepan. Turn the heat to medium and cook until the onion becomes colored a pale gold, Add the crumbled sausage and cook for 10 minutes. Add a few grindings of pepper, all the cream, turn the heat to medium high and cook until the cream has thickened, stirring once or twice. Taste and correct for salt.

3. Toss the sauce with cooked, drained pasta and serve at once with grated parmesan on the side.

Pasta with cream and sausage

Creamy pasta

It’s been almost one and a half year ago that I last made this dish… Where did time go?? I cannot believe it is that long but here we are in 2010 and I made this before in 2008… The recipe comes originally from the book “Rond de wereld in 80 recepten” (around the world in 80 recipes) from Madelon Schoemaker and I loved it right from the beginning. It’s not something that Tom would like as it is way too creamy for him, but I totally love it. I did make some alterations from the first time I made it from the one I made for lunch today, but overall; very good recipe… Now….. I also attempted to take a photo of the dish that first time and… ok.. this is quite embarrassing so promise you will not laugh…. I think I can safely say that it is officially the WORST foodphoto I (or anyone else for that matter) have ever made. Seriously…. if you look at that photo you would not ever want to go and make that dish now would you??

The same creation two years ago....

I get red cheeks even looking at that blob on the left… I do remember being totally frustrated with it (I wonder why??) and then even attempting to remake the dish with all the wrong ingredients and well, quite frankly it only proofs that I didn’t know a thing about foodstyling back then. And I only took the picture on the left and below to prove a point really. Not because I thought it was worth sharing!! (well, the recipe is, but the photo… let’s not talk about it anymore…) The second attempt with the green tagliatelle (what was I thinking???) is possibly worse then the first even. Well no, that is just the ultimate wrongness… haha..

Ofcourse two years ago I only started out in blogging and taking foodphotos and it was all pretty new to me. If I had known a little more I would have realized from the start that the sauce is not the most photogenic so following the recipe and taking the photo as it was; is simply not gonna work for this dish. And while the photo that I took today is not entirely perfect either.. it’s a hell of a lot better then that first one; wouldn’t you agree?

And the sorry second attempt...

I remember posting it on Flickr, quite desperately and asking people how they would possibly improve on this dish… I removed the photo later on as you don’t want that to be seen by anyone quite frankly. But on the other hand; it’s the reality, right? And I am sure I am not the only one who has been faced with total disaster when it comes to styling (or cooking) your food. Some dishes are just more photogenic than others and this is a good example of a rather difficult dish to style. For starters the sauce is white as you can see and quite thick so it does not flow around the pasta like – for instance – a carbonara would do so it’s a blob of sauce to start with. When you add all ingredients to the sauce and then put the sauce on top of the pasta you get the results on the left.

So what did I decide to do differently knowing where it would go wrong. I chose a different shape of pasta and certainly not the whole wheat variety which is just plain terrible to look at. I mixed the onions and the chicken that I used with the mascarpone and that was then my sauce but the rest of the ingredients I decided to add to the pasta later and not mix all together in the sauce. After cooking the pasta I added a drop of olive oil to it, so it shines nicely (and doesn’t stick together obviously) which also helps with the overall look.

I changed some of the ingredients to suit my taste better. The original recipe has shrimps in it and I am not a huge fan of shrimps. I like them, just not everywhere so I substituted with smoked chicken. Below is the recipe for 2 people with my alterations included.

CREAMY PASTA

150 gr pasta

1 spring onion, chopped

200 gr cherry tomatoes

150 gr smoked chicken, chopped

100 gr mascarpone

fresh parsley, cut

peper, salt, italian herbs

pinenuts, toasted

50 gr chive, cut

parmezan, grated

Boil pasta according to instructions. Cut the tomatoes in two. For the sauce lightly fry the onions and add the smoked chicken. Once done, add the onions and chicken to the mascarpone and stir until smooth. Add peper, salt and italian herbs to taste.

Add the chives to the pasta and divide over your plates. Put the sauce on top and add the tomatoes, pinenuts and parsley. Sprinkle with some parmezan to your liking…

Now go on…. have a good laugh!

Delicious pasta

What I sometimes like to do and I am sure I have told this before, but o well, I am getting old so then it is allowed to repeat onces self (within reason ofcourse..lol) When I need to work in the studio I sometimes decide I want to prepare a nice lunch; first to eat it ofcourse, but also so I can take photos and try some settings while I am at it. And I always love a good pasta for lunch. The “lunch culture” in Holland is very much of the boring sandwiches kind of lunch, although obviously you can spice any sandwich up to looks something like this or this... Just let your imagination run wild. But having pasta for lunch; I don’t know… it makes me feel good and I just loooooove pasta to bits. So I was browsing the internet this morning for ideas on what to make for lunch that would taste good, have mascarpone in it and look good (yes, yes, I know it’s rather pathetic to pick dishes out because they have a potential to look good..) and I stumbled upon this gorgeous dish on the Good Food website. I have changed it slightly as the original called for angel hair pasta and I just do not like angel hair pasta. It’s too…. angel like..

It also reminded me of one of the first pasta dishes I did that completely looked like the worst pasta dish ever!! In fact it was so bad that I deleted the photos… and I never delete photos that are technically correct. And on top of that I switched blogs and the original photos in the original post that I wrote about this disaster were also gone… So I can’t really show you how far I have come since then. Anyway… just believe me when I say that this looks much much better…! I did learn some stuff about foodstyling in the process… But I just decided I will cook that recipe again soon… I just have to do better! (update; I just found the photos again which had been misplaced. I reuploaded them in the post from last year but you will be able to see a before and after if I redo this dish!)

So, here I am, in the studio frying some bacon in the pan and it’s a good thing I do not have a smoke alarm there or it would have gone completely crazy! I don’t have a proper stove in the studio so I cook on those little portable burners which work fine most of the time but I also don’t have a ventilationsystem so I have to rely on the open window, which did not work very well… Man, there was some serious smoke forming! It’s a good thing my customer came hours later or they would have called the fire department upon entering the building! (well, ok I do like to exaggerate a little from time to time)

Thankfully the open window did help in getting rid of most of the smoke soon, so no harm done… As for the pasta; it’s another one of those great recipes which you can adjust to your liking. I loved it and I got to use some of my leftover mascarpone (which you will find out all about on saturday!) I only forgot to bring my parmezan cheese so I had it without, which was also good, but definitely would be even better with some nicely grated parmesan on top! Btw; did you also notice a lot of peas in my meals lately? I just notice it myself all of a sudden…

Tagliatelle with saffron, bacon and peas (serves 2, ready in 15 minutes)

few slices of bacon

1 pinch of saffron

olive oil

1 garlic clove

200 ml of white wine

2 tbsp of mascarpone

1 lemon, zested

150 gr frozen peas, defrosted

100 gr tagliatelle

basil, chopped to serve

freshly grated parmesan

In a non stick frying pan (preferably a deep one) heat the olive oil and cook the garlic and the bacon until golden. Crush the saffron in a small bowl and add 1 tbsp of boiling water. Allow to sit for 1 minute and then add to the pan. Pour in the wine and season well.

Reduce by half and then add the mascarpone, lemon and peas and heat through. Cook the pasta according to package instructions. Drain well and add to the pan with the sauce. Serve with basil and grate some fresh parmesan on top.

And did you notice how incredibly quick this is?? The taste was surprisingly good. Better then I even had imagined it to be…

I am sending this dish in for Presto Pasta Nights #152 (which is my first time, can you believe it??) which is hosted by Michelle of Italian Mama Chef this week!

Mushroom risotto

Ok, I am so terribly behind on the Cooking Italy schedule that it’s kind of a miracle that I made the risotto that is scheduled for december 14th ahead of schedule… But then again; I didn’t exactly follow the recipe that Marcella gave, so not sure if this counts as having finished the recipe.. lol… I was planning on using porcini, as I really do like porcini, but for some reason my supermarket was out of the porcini and I had set my mind on making risotto, after first thinking I was going to make Olga’s pasta (which I will be making soon!) and then thinking to follow Lisa’s suggestion of another pasta to in the end decide to make risotto… So far for making up your mind before going to the store!!

Not being able to use the porcini I settled for using another dried mushroom which they did have in the store and that was cantharelles. It wasn’t very long ago that I tried my first cantharelle fresh and so I had never tried the dried version before and can’t say that I liked it either. My guess is that the mushrooms were rather old; they even smelled ‘dusty’!! I had them soaked in hot water for 15 minutes and then they had to be cooked for 10 minutes. Cantharelles are known to be difficult to clean and these ones were even harder to clean judging by the mouthful of sand Tom had to swallow later on.. Oops.. I did rinse them when still dry and cleaned them again once cooked. I did not use the soaking liquid which I do like to do when using porcini, but it just didn’t smell very good, so I skipped that part.

Instead of sticking to the ingredients in the recipe I added some peas in for color and taste. Plus I added fresh chestnut mushrooms as well. Which was a good thing after all since the dried ones where not that tasty. For the broth I used forest mushroom cubes as I had tried that before with risotto and really liked the mushroomy flavor that comes out of them. They are only around at this time of year, as it’s not a common flavor for making stock.

I do make risotto very often and this was not the best of them due to the – not so tasty – chantarelles, but it was still a decent meal. As was Tom’s remark when taking a second helping; ‘ for a vegetarian meal it’s quite tasty’.. I can see how this would work really well with porcini and I might even throw in a few crispy baked pancetta bits.

I hope to make another of Marcella’s dishes for tomorrow! I have been meaning to make the amatriciana pasta now for a while, but every time something was missing and now I seem to have all the ingredients!

When I first read that we had white clam sauce on the menu for this week’s Cooking Italy, I was seriously doubting that I would be making this. You have to know that I am really not a fan of shelled seafood… I just think they look scary.. But then again; I do love a good coquille and I always think you have to try something first before you can say that you don’t like it. And clams where something I had never tried before, so…. I went in search of clams. Well first I went in search of how clams are called in Dutch… and quite frankly; I still don’t know! So if anyone knows what a clam is called in Dutch please let me know.

I ended up buying ‘kokkels’ which I think is possible translated as cockles? But they look sort of similar to clams, so I figured those would do. It’s not as if you can actually buy those in the shop here. I had to call our one and only fishshop and ask them to bring it. Ofcourse that meant I had to purchase an entire kilo of them, which is really a waste. The good side was that I could practice on how to prepare them as I was – and still am – quite clueless.

Cockles

The recipe stated that you should put them in a pan on high heat and once opened remove them immediately and the juice would then be used to prepare the rest of the dish. Ok, that sounded fairly simple but what happened when I put the little beasties in the pan is that they did drip some fluids but that evaporated as soon as it hit the really hot pan! So no juice whatsoever was left after the first testrun.

The second try I figured I should ad some oliveoil into the pan before tossing them in and that worked better, although it was really a limited amount of juice. Now I didn’t toss in 20 pieces at one time, so that could have been the issue. Who knows… The recipe also states that you should pour the juices through a paper kitchen towel to get rid of any remaining sand or other stuff that shouldn’t be there, but really… that would have meant that it would all be taken in by the paper! It was that little…

I did feel kind of sorry for the little creatures… being tossed like that into a hot pan and basically being boiled alive..  A bit cruel I thought but ok, they were gonna die anyway at some point.

Apart from that whole cockle/clam adventure it was pretty straightforward, so no surprises there.

Now as far as the taste goes; I was really not impressed. Keep in mind that I am not a fan of shelled fish. There is something about them that just doesn’t really work for me.. Although I have to confess that I am probably just being squamish… I mean…. look at that thing in the shell; that – to me – does not resemble something appetizing! Ofcourse, I am glad that I tried it and I will definitely not be making this again…lol… I also thought that there was not enough juice to follow the recipe. So that part to me was a bit weird. I love pasta and most of the flavors that go with it, but this was a no go for me.

But if you are a fan of shelled fish then this just might be perfect for you! Here is the recipe:

White Clam Sauce (serves 4)

18 live clams in their shells

5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic

1,5 tablespoon of chopped parsley

1 red hot chili pepper

1 plum tomato, diced

100 ml dry white wine

450 gr of pasta

6 fresh basil leaves

To clean the clams put them into fresh water with salt for about 20 minutes. They will open up slightly and expel the sand that they have inside. Scrub the clams to clean them of any debris and repeat the process until no more stuff is coming of them.

Once cleaned keep them in a bowl in the fridge, uncovered so they can breath… (this is really weird as they make little popping noises while in the fridge…)

Heat up the clams to open them in hot pan. I found that you need to add either oil or a little bit of water, as otherwise the fluids coming from the clams will immediately evaporate. Make sure to cover the pan as it will jump around a bit.

As soon as the clams open up take them out of the pan using a slotted spoon, take the clams out of their shells and cut into 2 or 3 pieces unless they are very small. Put them in a small bowl and cover with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cover the bowl tightly with cling film and set aside for later but don’t put in the fridge.

Choose a skillet or saute pan that is large enough to contain the pasta later. Put in 3 tbsp of olive oil and the sliced garlic, and turn the heat up. Don’t let the garlic become coloured, then add the parsley and the chili pepper. Stir once or twice and add the diced tomato. Cook the tomato for 1-2 minutes, stirring it from time to time, then add the wine. Simmer the wine for about 20-30 seconds, letting it reduce, then turn the heat off

Cook the pasta in salted water until it is barely al dente. You don’t want the pasta to be too well done, although I did find that the juice of the clams wasn’t sufficient to cook the pasta till further so my pasta was slightly underdone.

Drain the pasta and add immediately to the skillet or saute pan, turning the heat up high and adding the clam juice. Cook, tossing and turning the pasta, until all the juice has evaporated.

Add the cut up clams with all the oil in the bowl and the torn basil leaves, toss in the pan 2-3 times, then transfer to a hot plate and serve at once.

Crespelles filled with prosciutto, tomato and parmezan

When reading this recipe I knew it was going to be a tricky one as it includes quite some mozarella as well as Parmezan. Having a guy who does not like cheese (….), I had the feeling it would possibly be too cheesy… And I was right.. He was not amused..lol

Ok, it happens maybe once or twice a year that I make something that he really does not like and today was one of those days! Of course I had anticipated that might happen, so to make up for it I had also prepared a delicious dessert with chocolate mousse which I knew he would love. You gotta do something to keep ‘m happy! Of course he has no reason to complain, if I may say so myself and he didn’t.. Well, mmm, not really; he pulled a disgusted face, pushed the plate aside and declared he would not be eating that. I was happy I had kept some of the ‘naked’ crespelles so he had those with icing sugar…

So what did I think of the crespelles? Making the pancakes was really easy. I am not sure how it is in other countries, but I always feel that making pancakes (which these crespelles really are) is something of a Dutch pastime. I grew up making pancakes, so that was really quite easy. The only thing was that they curled up a bit on one side as soon as you flipped them over. Not sure why that was but it didn’t really hurt anyone so nothing to worry about I would guess.

All in all this was a pretty straightforward and easy recipe, which I will undoubtedly not make again since it’s a bit too much work to make for one. I love to cook, but I love it even more when someone else actually enjoys eating it. It’s not fun when they look disgusted!

I did like the dish, although had I known that I would be eating it alone, I would have added more Parmesan to spice up the taste. Things cannot get too cheesy for me but since I still hoped (against my better judgment) he might eat it, I went easy on the cheese. So much for good manners!

I just took a few quick snaps, but that seems to be what I do most of the times these days. That is one of the advantages of things like dessert or cakes and cookies. You have much more time to take decent photographs of the finished products! With actual meals you have to be quick to prevent an uprising of hungry husbands…

Of the Marcella recipes I have made sofar this was definitely the quickest to make, so in that sense it was a real winner and it sure has potential. I might try a non cheesy version for next time. I think it’s quite versatile and would be easy to adjust to your own liking.

Here is the recipe!

Crespelles with prosciutto, tomatoes and and mozzarella (from Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classics Italian cooking

For making the crespelles:

250 ml milk

2 eggs

85 gr flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

Put the milk in a bowl and while mixing gradually add the flour until it’s smooth. Add the eggs one by one and bring to taste with salt.

Bake the crespelle in a non skillet pan. You should be able to get 16 out of it according to the recipe but I got only about 10 and they weren’t big or thick, so not sure how that compares…

For the assembled dish:

prosciutto

8 tbsp of freshly grated parmesan

1,5 tbsp of chopped flatleave parsley

1 clove of garlic chopped

170 gr canned tomatoes (you could use fresh if you like)

olive oil

8 tbsp finely chopped mozzarella

Take a small saucepan and saute the garlic, parsley and tomatoes. Reduce the fluids of the tomato and cook for about 15 minutes.

In a baking tin of about 22 cm wide (buttered slightly) put the largest crepe you made on the bottom and lightly spread with tomato sauce, sprinkle with Parmesan, shredded prosciutto and mozzarella and repeat this 8 times. Make sure you have enough tomatoe sauce left for the top crepe. Sprinkle with Parmesan on top and put in a preheated oven (200C) for 15 minutes.

I actually thought the 15 minutes was too short. They were warm but not hot, so I would advise leaving them a little longer in the oven.

O by the way; this was the Cooking Italy recipe for the week of september 7. I had not joined the cooking italy group at that point, but was intrigued by this recipe so wanted to make it regardless of missing the deadline… Just so you know I am posting outside of the time lines!

As I mentioned yesterday already I joined the Cooking Italy group that Angela from Spinach Tiger started. It’s great fun and each month she picks four recipes that we cook out of the book ‘The essentials of Italian Classic Cooking” from Marcella Hazan. I’ve been reading in the book and have already learned quite a bit about the Italian cuisine without even cooking much more then the bolognese sauce!

When I first read that I had to cook this sauce for something like more then 3 hours, I was thinking ‘ What???!!! Why???!!!’ but having now actually tasted the full and rich flavors of this dish, I can see why…

I am not convinced I used the correct ground beef. The recipes calls for ground beef chuck, but I have honestly no idea what that is. The chuck part that is and we don’t have a good butcher around here either, so that could pose a bit of a problem for some of the later recipes. But I’ll manage to find a good meat source at some point, I hope.

Ingredients

The recipe itself is really not very hard to make, it just involves a lot of waiting time for fluids to evaporate, add something else, wait for it to evaporate again and repeat. It was a first for me to cook ground beef in milk, but according to Marcella this is to prevent the acidic taste of the tomatoes to get the upper hand. And it worked; I think I can honestly say that this is one of the best bolognese sauces I have tasted so far.

But then, ok, I have to admit it… I have had mostly jar bolognese sauces up till now (sorry Angela! I just read your post about the bolognese sauce so I understand now that using bolognese sauce is really a crime…:) I didn’t know any better!!)

Officially we should have made homemade pasta as well, but I haven’t gotten around to buying the equipment for that yet, so I bought fresh pasta in the store. Tagliatelle.

I also learned that bolognese in Bologna is just never served with spaghetti! I mean, honestly? Isn’t spaghetti bolognese almost famous around these parts? So, as I said; I did learn lots of things today!

The dish was really well received by Tom as well, who loved it. I can see this sauce being made over and over again, as you can vary with this to your hearts content. I will try and get proper beef for next time I make this, but all in all, it was really good and yummy.

BOLOGNESE MEAT SAUCE

(serves 6)

2 tbsp of vegetable oil

45 gr butter

85 gr onion, chopped

3 sticks of celery, chopped

4 medium carrots, chopped

350 gr of ground beef chuck (not too lean)

salt

freshly ground black pepper

250 ml full-fat milk

whole nutmeg

250 ml of dry white wine

500 gr of tinned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up with their juice

550-675 gr pasta

freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese to serve

1. Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot, turn the heat to medium and saute the onion until it becomes translucent. Add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.

2. Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the beef with a fork, stir well and cook until it has lost its raw red colour.

3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating – about 1/8 teaspoon – of nutmeg and stir.

4. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all the ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding 125 ml water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.

5. Toss with cooked, drained pasta and serve with freshly grated Parmesan on the side.

I am looking forward to trying the next recipe!!