Every now and then I flip through my recipe folder and find things that excite me. And although shopping was delivered yesterday, I went out this morning to get some bacon( and place order at the butcher’s for an upcoming Vegetarian Feast with the Gray’s on Sunday) and basil.

Normally pesto in my kitchen is freshly made and served with spaghetti or tagliatelle, today it was rigatoni and crispy bacon and fresh cherry tomatoes were added. Excellent idea, we agreed, especially the tomatoes, which, said Florek, made the dish more lively and vibrant. `

Thumbs up. 🙂

We’ve made it to Italy. Through covid uncertainty, cancelled flights, tests, we’re now in our favourite spot in Castelnuovo, but we need to stay at home for 5 days before taking another set of tests to be released safely to the public. In spite of being fully vaccinated. :-/

So we’ve done a very substantial shopping in Esselunga and I have been busy. Busy baking a lovely, simple olive bread, for instance.

I brought a small packet of instant yeast from home, chucked it into roughly 400g of a random Italian flour, added salt, water, olive oil, combined it all well and gave to Florek to knead for about 10 minutes.

It’s risen beautifully within an hour, outside on the terrace, in those glorious temperatures we’re experiencing and then baked for about 40 minutes in 220 degrees. Good little loaf!

Also made was a lovely tomato sauce, made exclusively of fresh tomatoes, skinless. I took my time with it, until wonderfully rich and tomatoey, went great with gnocchi.

Impatiently awaiting some eating out in Lucca. 🙂

Also worth mentioning is this little invention-one walks in to a supermarket and finds a lovely, fresh, risen pizza dough, ready to use and enjoy, at a modest cost of less than 2 euro.

Must of course mention sensational parma ham with equally sensational melon, Izzie’s favourite. Yum!

This is one of my favourite pasta dishes when on holidays in Italy. I can never get enough of the simply delicious, clammy pasta. Having watched a few episodes of a vlog I recently discovered, by a British expat living in Positano, I decided to have a go at this dish myself. I was convinced that clams in Waitrose will be wonderfully cheap, as I don’t remember paying more than 10 euro for a plate of vongole in Lucca, but no, this is Britain and a bag of Dorset clams set me back £14 (!!!). One can sometimes get dover sole cheaper than that, but I went ahead with it.

About 30 minutes before I started cooking I followed Angela Hartnett’s recipe and soaked the clams in some cold, very salty water. Good call, as there was a lots of grit and sand left in the sink, rather than on the bottom of the plate.

I infused slowly my olive oil with 2 cloves of garlic, some fresh chili as well as chili flakes – one can never be sure how strong will the chili be- then threw a handful of cherry tomatoes and cooked it all down. A good splash of white wine and the lid went on. Pasta was cooking, so I could then chuck the clams in, cover them and cook them till they opened. Combined the pasta, clams and juices together, topped with lots of parsley, a bit of extra salt and it was done.

Florek, who can only take a certain amount of seafood without suffering did have a good go at my vongole, but was not blown away and neither was I, if I’m honest. I finished it, but was I transported to Lucca while eating my efforts? Not quite. In a month or so I should be able to have the real thing! 🙂

One of our favourites, especially when courgettes are in season. This summer I have some lovely, sweet, yellow ones in the greenhouse and I used one of them today, alongside a green one. The job starts with toasting off some pine nuts, I like toasting them even when the packet says “toasted”. In another pan a red onion, some fresh chili and chili flakes get chucked in. A handful of cherry tomatoes. Grated courgettes, roughly grated, some texture is essential. This cooks down nicely with a little bit of chicken stock, seasoning of salt and pepper, but also a drizzle of sesame oil, which might seem controversial, but in my kitchen I respond to myself only, so I use my beloved sesame oil for this extra oomph of smokiness.

Pasta gets cooked and thrown onto the veggies, tossed well, finished off with pinioli and parmigiano. A final drizzle of extra virgin olive oil is never a bad idea.

This is a pasta dish I can eat A LOT of. I did today! 🙂

There are things I love to eat, but don’t often cook, as I’m the only fan of them in our family. I’ve made a lovely shepherd’s pie with ready lamb shanks bought from M&S, hoping I will succeed in convincing them that lamb can be delicious. Iz finished her portion, but only because she was promised a ride on the front seat of Tesla model S we have for a week. Florek struggled, but managed most of it. I won’t be doing it again, I think. Duck is another one of those things that I adore, he doesn’t. Cabbage, as well.

But cabbage was made this time to accompany my confit duck legs and I enjoyed it, but needed to call mum for a method, as I have never prepared cabbage this way and have not eaten it in donkey’s years.

I bought a pointed, sweet, small cabbage, chopped it quite roughly, chucked into the pan with a splash of water, salt and sugar. Mum suggested cumin as well, I opted out. Covered it and cooked for about 10 minutes, during which I got on with my roux, made with some leftover back fat from last night’s pierogi. Flavour like no other, I always have some in the freezer. My roux also contained some chopped and fried shallots, once the cabbage was tender, but still held its shape nicely I added the roux, stirred it all well and adjusted seasoning. It made a wonderful extra along the duck and the new potatoes. It’s a yes from me!

I was really excited about making these( from mojewypieki.com). The colour looked spectacular and it seemed like a good way of getting some spinach into the child. I was even hoping she could help me make them on this rainy afternoon. But no, the child not in the mood for cooking and asked if she could have regular pancakes instead. Nope, spinach ones were the only ones on the menu.

I started with blitzing 90 g of spinach with a tall glass of milk into a nice, creamy, place green liquid. To that I added 1,5 tall glass of plain flour, 3 beaten eggs, a tall glass of sparkling water, about 1 tbsp of melted butter and some salt. The batter rested for 15 minutes and then I fried the pancakes on 2 pans to speed up the process.

I filled them with a nice mixture of fried bacon, shallot, mushrooms, courgettes and tomatoes, added some grated cheddar and warmed up in the oven for a few minutes before serving. A splash of ketchup works for me, I must say, no excitement from the child. At all. We are yet to find out what the Man of the House thinks.

From Good Food, Jeremy Pang’s idea. Caught my attention straight away, especially as the buns were not done in 5 hours, but were advertised as “quick”. And indeed, from start to finish, in no particular rush I made us a nice dinner and the buns were declared “the best ever” by Iz. They were made with 200g of self raising flour plus 1,1/2 tsp of baking powder, 2 tbsps caster sugar, a good pinch of salt, all this into the bowl of kitchen aid. To this I added 100 ml of milk mixed with 1 tbsp of sunflower oil and 1tbsp of white wine vinegar, added to the dry ingredients and let the mixer do the work. Within 5-6 minutes there was a lovely, elastic dough ready to cut into 6 balls, which were then flattened into ovals and rolled until something like 0,5 cm thick. A bit of sunflower oil brushed all over the top of each, then folded in half and into the steamer for about 8 minutes, 3 buns at a time.

Now, the sticky chicken was tasty, but it was not a revelation. I thought it needed at least twice as much of the sticky sauce, I would also give it more heat next time. 4 boneless chicken thighs, lightly marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil, baked in the oven, but if they were bbq’d, that would have made a world of difference. That sticky sauce was a mixture of 3 tbsps of soy, 1 tbsp of harissa paste, 1 tsp of white wine vinegar and some sesame oil. It needed more flavour, far too tame!

Once all cooked and ready the buns were assembled with sliced japaneno, coriander, spring onions and sesame seeds, I had to used some hoisin sauce in mine to make it more moist.

4 out of 5, but buns were awesome.

It took me half a day to decide what to feed my family with this evening. There was a nice selection of veggies in the fridge, mostly spinach, that was going to end up in a spinach and ricotta lasagne. But I didn’t really fancy it, so I looked through internet quickly for ideas. And green gnocchi seemed like a smashing idea, we all love gnocchi in this house. I found a couple of recipes and ended up following my gut and experience. The result was a lovely supper, all finished, flushed down with some cab sav (yes, it is only Wednesday, but I wasn’t working hard in the kitchen for nearly 2 hours to have my gnocchi with water, right?!) and now kitchen’s all tidy, I have Girls Aloud on fairly loud and actually feel like dancing for the first time in ages. It must be the cab sav. 🙂

I loosely followed the recipe, so ended up with too much food. 800 g of potatoes is a bit too much. 300 g of flour is too much. 200 g of spinach is ok. I boiled the spuds in skins till soft, peeled them when still fairly hot, squeezed them through the ricer. Added spinach puree ( cooked down on butter with some mashed garlic and salt), then added flour, but kept checking the texture, I’m glad I did not whack the whole 300g in. Quickly shaped them, the water was on stand by. As soon as the gnocchi came to the surface, onto the sauce they went, then served with freshly grated parmesan and a drop of olive oil.

The sauce was my usual signature tomato sauce, half and half fresh tomatoes and passata, lovingly reduced. I keep saying to Florek, that the first thing I will cook when we’re back in Castelnuovo in August( Covid allowing) will be some wonderful sugo al pomodoro, with only fresh tomatoes. And fresh herbs. Mmm.

We’re still in lockdown, so the restaurants are closed, but at least all the schools reopen tomorrow. No hope for eating out until mid May though. Restaurants cope in different ways, take aways mostly, some go further than that, like Rick Stein. His places offer some carefully prepared boxes, containing ingredients for a starter, main and a dessert for two, plus simple instructions how to put it together. Florek ordered us one of these boxes and it arrived yesterday, beautifully packed.

For starters there were Cornish mussels, that somebody even cleaned before vacuum packing them, for the main an Indonesian curry, pavlova to finish with. A very pleasant bottle of French vermentino, 60 ml of which was to be used to prepare the mussels, I used more and then we drained it in the evening, all this pleasure for £55 plus DPD delivery.

Mussels were lovely, different to the creamy, garlicky ones I make, those were flavoured with confit onions and no cream was recommended. Nice, but I’m sticking with mariniere next time.

The curry was lovely too. Fish lovely and fresh, especially the seabass.

The bean salad for me could be skipped, especially as the side dressing was made with shrimp paste, a vile ingredient that does not agree with my palate since that awful nasi goreng I made once. Florek tried a little for the science, I smelled it and gave it a tiny taste before downing a glass of wine quickly. Yuk.

2 nice big meringues were provided, all I had to do was to whip the cream and fold it together with some passion fruit. And that was that.

Good stuff altogether, we might be trying a different menu some time soon.

I’ve come across it once or twice before, but having seen it in the Good Food mag recently I felt like doing it again, with all the attention and love it deserves. There’s always passata in my pantry, there’s always a chunk of parmesan, all the other stuff came from Sainsbury’s this morning. So having painted a chunk of my garden fence I’ve made us a chicken parmigiana for dinner. And it was very much enjoyed.

I started with a nice tomato sauce, a shallot, a couple of cup mushrooms, some passata, some dry oregano, lots of seasoning. While that was bubbling away I cut my chicken breasts into smaller pieces, bashed them flattish, seasoned, tossed in flour, then in egg, then in a breadcrumbs and parmesan mixture. Pan fried briefly, without worrying if it’s under- it was en route to the oven. Tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish, chicken, more sauce, some mozzarella and more parmesan, some fresh chopped cherry tomatoes. It baked for 20-25 minutes until the cheese began to brown up.

Served with crusty bread and some chianti, followed by some French cheeses. Austerity. 🙂