Ragu & Gnocchi Heaven

Ok, we have all heard of spaghetti bolognese and I must admit it is a delight; nice spaghetti with a very rich tomato sauce. However, to Italians, there is no such thing as spaghetti bolognese. It is a dish that became common amongst the Italian immigrants who were arriving in America in their hundreds of thousands at the star of the twentieth century, escaping dire poverty in Italy, in particular the south. This is an important point, as spaghetti is much more common in southern Italian cuisine rather than northern. So this southern pasta was mixed with a tomato and meat sauce and you got spaghetti bolognese. After tonights ragu di Bologna however, I am not going back to spag bol!

Pasta debate aside, I actually took this opportunity to perfect my potato Gnocchi, little delightful pillows that resemble potato dumplings. These go well with any sauce as they absorb a lot of the flavour. To get the perfect Gnocchi, mix approx 150g of mashed potatoes (do not add any butter or milk or cream) with 100g 00 flour, 1 egg and a pinch of salt. You are looking for a nice dry dough, if it too runny it will result in soggy heavy Gnocchi. Take a handful of the dough at a time and roll out into a thing sausage shape, the with a sharp knife cut into roughly 2cm long dumplings. Take each individual Gnocchi and press into a fork to get a channel pattern, this is not for decoration it will help absorb more sauce! Now onto the sauce….

The thing that made the difference with this ragu was the inclusion of chicken livers. This gives an extra dimension both in terms of texture and of course taste. What I have discovered recently is that there are not many Italian dishes that do not include certain basics: carrots, celery, onion and garlic. So, add of all of these with some pork mince, chopped pork and some blended chicken livers. All you need now is some tomatoes, so add a good deal of tomato paste (to give a lovely concentrated flavour) and some delicious passata (sieved tomatoes). Another secret to this is to have it cooking for hours, you will not get the desired flavours if you only have it cooking for a short time,vin this case good things definitely come to those who wait! I waited for more than 4 hours today, and it was good good good!

Your Gnocchi will take only a few minutes to cook in boiling water and they will tell you when they are ready by floating to the top. I was overjoyed with my Gnocchi tonight as they were perfectly fluffy and soaked up the flavour of the ragu brilliantly.

Add your Gnocchi then top with a good load of the ragu, sit back and enjoy. 4 hours in the making but a dish that will live with me for a very long time, food does that doesn’t it?

I have a group of old friends coming over on Friday night, I now know what I will be cooking them! I hope wherever you are you are having both your stomachs and your souls fed, happy eating everyone!

J

Scallops with Black Pudding and Pancetta

A few years ago I came across this dish as a tapas in a beautiful Spanish restaurant in Glasgow. Tough they served it with chorizo which gives a whole new dimension to the dish, I had none to hand and so replaced it with pancetta. This was a gorgeous meal, made in minutes. Please see the link below for the video I want to share with you. Again I apologise for any difficulties understanding my Scottish accent!

YouTube: Meals in Minutes

Happy eating everyone!

James

Pork with White Wine

Well I am not long back from work and I have already cooked and eaten a delicious dish. Who said you need time to cook and eat well? My dish was chopped pork with vegetables cooked in white wine.
I heat up some olive oil (4 tbsps to be exact) and move on to my vegetables. I chopped carrots, celery, onion and garlic and added to the pan along with the pork. One of the joys of cooking is the sound of ingredients hitting the hot olive oil, the sizzle is just fantastic, music to my ears. Seconds later your hit with all these smells, the freshness of the celery, the magic of the garlic and you just know that this is going to be special.
Once the pork has a bit of colour, add the wine. I recently watched an episode of Two Greedy Italians and Genaro Contaldo cooked braised beef in red wine. Now he didn’t just add a bit of cooking wine, he used a bottle of good quality wine. When it comes to food and also to wine, don’t take shortcuts. With this fresh in my mind, I add a bottle of Pinot Grigio to the pan and also add some cavolo nero and chopped oregano.
I was in 2 minds whether or not to make this with pasta, my idea was to add the pasta into the wine and cook it all together for maximum flavour, but this will wait for another day as I decided to use up some leftover pear barley that I cooked over the weekend. I have been reading about the cuisine of Tuscany and was introduced to the notion of la cucina povera, the food of the poor. What better way to use up leftover pearl barley than to add it to this creation?
Once the barley was added I check the dish for seasoning, and added a pinch of salt and black pepper. And at this point I jus couldn’t wait any longer, the smells are just incredible and I really am hungry! I lay some of Emily’s leftover home made Oat & Linseed bread at the bottom of each bowl and scoop up a few ladel fulls from the pan. A quick sprinkle of pepper and a shower of gran padano cheese and done!

Pork and vegetables in white wine. Took me 20 minutes to think up, prepare, cook and eat! Cooking for yourself is a huge step towards a healthier lifestyle, and it can be done quicker than it takes to order a take away. This dish was screaming with healthiness and also flavour. I will keep this recipe for another time, I just love taking aspects of many different dishes and combining them to create something very special.

That’s all for today folks, happy cooking, and of course happy eating!

J

Crunchy Crackling

Pork belly is something that I was brought up on, as it is a dish that is very fashionable in central/eastern Europe. One of my favourite memories from my childhood was getting my hands on some of my mums crunchy crackling. When eating meat I do tend to discard any obvious fat but I could do no such thing with crackling. The thrill of the crunch and the taste is just out of this world. I have only started to cook my own belly pork recently, so it will take me years to come anywhere close to my mums.

I decide to make a nice stuffing to go with this, a combination of sausage meat, mustard, sage, onions and plenty of rosemary. On the side, I chopped and roasted some fennel and I made a lovely mixture of kale and pearl barley. Kale is just wonderful, full of flavour, very versatile and also very very healthy. Kale comes packed full of iron, vitamins and anti oxidants. Pearly barley is similarly very healthy and is high in fibre. All in all a very healthy meal, so I don’t need to feel too bad about the crackling!

I was very very pleased with the pork, I browned it on all sides in some olive oil before baking in the oven at 160degrees for an hour. I then turned the oven up to 250degrees for 10minutes to really crisp the crackling up, with amazing results. What was also amazing was the crunchy rosemary leaves, delicious! The pork belly was also delicious, but so to was the mixture of pearl barley and kale. This was a very hearty dish, good to combat the ever dropping temperature outside.
Tomorrow for lunch I am going to try and create something using molecular gastronomy as promised. For dinner, I have been told that I have been hogging the kitchen too much recently by my beautiful fiancé Emily. So tomorrow evening I will jus have to make do with eating! Poor me!

That’s all for today folks, thanks to everyone who has popped by so far. I hope I am bringing a smile, and some inspiration to you all.

Happy cooking and happy eating

J