Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

I make this dish when the vegetables are really nice and fresh. I guess it’s my version of pasta primavera. Last week, we ended up with some really good asparagus from the farmers’ market. I also made it with broccoli and asparagus since. It’s superb. I know it doesn’t look all that interesting to many carnivores out there but when made wit fresh asparagus and broccoli, the vegetables are beautifully sweet.

For two:

1. 6 thick asparagus
2. 1/2 head of broccoli, cut into small florets
3. 3 shallots, sliced
4. 1 tbsp of pine nuts
5. 1 small lemon
6. 250g of spaghetti
7. 3 tbsp of spinach and almond pesto*
8. 80 g. of butter
9. 1 tbsp of olive oil
10. 1/2 tsp of salt

Use a peeler and peel back the tough bit of the asparagus stems. Bring a large pot of  salted water to boil. Add pasta and cook for about 5 minutes. Before blanching the whole asparagus stems and broccoli florets in the boiling water for 1 minute. Remove the vegetables, set aside.

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I bought half of a really nice cauliflower from the farmers’ market the other day and decided that I wanted to make something simple with it. I was inspired by a recipe from Matt Moran’s new book When I Come Home which featured in this month’s Delicious magazine. It was originally made with orecchiette and I didn’t have any. Read the rest of this entry »

I was totally inspired by Pasta Rustica because their spaghetti salsiccia was everyone’s favourite on the night. So I tried to create my own at home. This was actually made almost entirely out of kitchen staples. I had bought the Italian sausages from a butcher at the Camberwell Market for something but didn’t end up using it. Just as well. The sausages turned out to be really good for this recipe.

The one thing to bear in mind, of course, is the quality of your Italian sausages. Try to get your hands on some good sausages from a good butcher. It will make all the difference. Read the rest of this entry »

I have had this dish a couple of times over the past months: at Pasta Rustica on Lygon St. and then at Gross Florentino: The Grill. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but really, my version kicked ass!

This is really an adaptation of what I think the dish should be like rather than following any specific recipe.

For 4 servings (well we finished these for lunch but we had seconds):

1. 3/4 kg. of very fresh, preferably live, vongole*
2. 250g. of thin spaghetti or spaghettini
3. 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4. 2-3 salted anchovies in oil
5. 1 ripe tomato, chopped
6. 2 shallots, finely sliced
7. 2 stalks of spring onions, finely sliced
8. 1/2 tsp of dried chilli flakes
9. A few twists of black pepper
10. 1/4 cup of booze, preferrably white wine but I didn’t have any so I used shao hsing.
11. 4 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
12. 2 stalks of fresh parsley, chopped

Rinse the clams in plenty of cold water to remove the grit. Or ask your fishmonger how you should clean them (I think it depends how much cleaning they have already done on them) Cook the pasta. Heat up a big pot (you need room to toss around later) with 3 tbsp of olive oil. Add chopped garlic, shallots and the white parts of the spring onions. Add the anchovies. Turn the heat down to medium high and stir around a bit until the anchovies fall apart. Add tomato, chilli flakes and some freshly ground pepper and stir. Read the rest of this entry »

This was so ridiculously easy. It was one of those weeknight magic. This is basically a left over from Country-style Rabbit Casserole.

But first the absolute laziest way to make pappardelle:

Go off to your local supermarket and buy a pack of ‘fresh’ lasagna sheets. Hey it was Tuesday night – there is no making of pasta on week nights thank you very much. Cut the pasta sheets into pappardelle – which are about 1-2 inches.

I think this is entirely up to you, so it depends on how wide you think pappardelle should be. Personally, I reckon it should be about1.5 inches wide. So I cut them into quarters. We only needed about 1/4 of a pack per serve.

Back to our leftover casserole. I got Josh to pick the rabbit meat off the bone and shred them into tiny pieces. I heated up a frying pan with a little bit of butter and added a spring of rosemary. I picked out all the pickling onions from the casserole and add the rest of the casserole in. I loosened the mixture with a little bit of white wine.

I added zest of half an orange into the ragu. Seasoned it with pepper and just a little touch of cream. The idea of the creamy wasn’t to make the sauce creamy. But rather to round off the flavour because I was using fresh pasta. If I were using dried pasta, I probably would have drizzled extra v olive oil on instead.

I then turned the heat off and rested the sauce. I brought a saucepan of water to boil and added the pappardelle and cook for about 2-3 minutes. I then spooned some of the ragu in a separate frying pan and heat up the sauce. I used a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked pasta onto the sauce. I added a little bit of the cooking water to the pasta to loosen it.

And that was it. I grated some more orange zest on top and sprinkled chopped fresh parsley on the pasta. It was lovely. I have the say the rabbit improved a lot after sitting in the fridge for a couple of days. I even made another serve and packed a lunchbox for Josh.

Fresh pasta doesn’t really do well sitting around but you know, lunchbox expectations were never high! So he loved it the next day too.