Following a super night at Ethel's leaving do last night (SHC on fine form and ended up in what can only be described as a lock-in at a Chinese restaurant) I had retired to my bed around lunchtime to catch up on a bit of sleep. I have little to no stamina for late nights, I'm an early bird. I was accompanied, as is the norm, by Pickle and Tibby ("the girls") who can sense imminent snoozing from the furthest reaches of our garden, nay possibly the end of the street. Sleeping with Pickle and Tibby is a lovely, if rather restrictive, affair. As they have got older, they both refuse to sleep within a certain radius of each other, therefore they are each required to take opposite sides of my bed. This means I am left to slide myself carefully into "No Man's Land" between them. It's a delicate manoeuvre, which if done incorrectly will result in one of the other parties removing themselves from the bed in disgust. I can't deny I sometimes find this quite a relief and have been know on occasions to take to the proceedings with a somewhat Devil-may-care attitude in the hope of a little extra leg room.
Sadly, the scorned party is usually Tibby as Pickle burgeoning weight gives her more anchorage. Tibby, as you will see from the photograph, has a very judgmental and expressive face (incidentally the photograph was taken upon being woken up by Tibby this afternoon, she favours the Persistent Paw in the Face method of rousing her mistress). The grubby white is a perfect backdrop for her favourite look of painful confusion. In a post-eviction fury she will huddle quietly in the coldest corner of the room looking hurt and bewildered as to what she could have done to proke such an assault against her. Do I love Pickle more? What has she done to receive such treatment? I mustn't worry, she will be fine here in this freezing, barren area of the bedroom, look, if she cuddles herself up tightly it's as if her mummy does really love her...... Needless to say she wins. I call her encouragingly for about an hour, extolling the virtues of sleeping in her previous position, after which I start to doze guiltily. As sleep is about to take me in it's warm embrace, she hurtles across me, trampling over my face and head to her water bowl on the bedside table. She drinks noisily for a bit then returns to her position on the bed ("I'm sure I remember this being bigger?") and I move aside to accomodate her. Inevitably, I wake a 3am with a dead leg and a tingling right buttock.
Back to today. I should be looking at getting my tomato seeds sowed but the reminants of snow outside makes that feel a little comical, plus I don't really have the drive for gardening at the moment. I'm a terribly lazy individual and so will probably be forced into action in the near future, I won't worry about it for now.
I have been asked for, and I quote, "Recipes for Idiots". I'm not really sure how to respond to this request as I fear I would be patronising. To be honest I think it doesn't really matter what you make, or how complicated it is, as long as the ingredients are good. With good ingredients you need to do less to them to make the dish taste fantastic. Sadly, in the UK, this normally means paying more for your shopping. However, you can always grow your own. It's easier and easier now and I love doing it, growing something from seed is the most amazing buzz, particularly potatoes. My first potato harvest made me cry. I was that happy. True I was on quite heavy medication at the time but still.....
My offering as an example of an easy, simple recipe which relies on good ingredients is Garlic & Chilli Linguine. There are loads of recipes for this on the web and in cookbooks, this is my version. It's a long recipe written down as, naturally, I have an opinion about everything but it's a piss-easy recipe.
Garlic & Chilli Linguine
Serves two people.
a bottle of extra virgin olive oil (as good as you can afford to get)
a bulb of garlic (to use probably four cloves)
one or two red chillies
one lemon
a packet of linguine (I use De Cecco in it's distinctive blue and yellow packet, nice rough texture which holds sauces well)
sea salt flakes
freshly ground black pepper (never, I repeat never, use the pre-ground stuff go thee and buy yourself a pepper grinder)
Pour some olive oil into a high-sided frying pan, I think they're called saute pans. I don't know how much in tablespoons but I basically pour into the pan whilst counting to four - one elephant, two elephant etc. You need a big pan of boiling water and I mean a big pan and I mean boiling, a proper "rolling" boil with big bubbles and everything. Put a tablespoon of sea saltt flakes in, if not more, I probably do. Pasta needs oodles of salty boiling water to cook well - the more pasta, the bigger the pan, the more water and the more salt. The amount of pasta is up to you, depends how hungry the two of you are. I go by this rule - if you hold the strands of linguine together so the cross-section is circular, look down at the tops of the strands and the circumference should be that of a one pence piece. Do I mean circumference? I hope that makes sense, I'm not sure how else to describe it. Anyway, that's enough for one person (in our house anyway) and so multiply at your leisure.
Whack the linguine in the boiling water pushing it slowly until it's all covered by the water. Bring back to the boil and stir well to seperate the strands. Boil for as long as it says on the packet, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to keeps the strands apart. Whilst this is happening you can do the sauce as the sauce will be done around the time the pasta is, if the pasta's done first, drain and set it to one side as the sauce won't be long. Don't leave it in the water it will continue cooking. Pasta should be al dente so it should have a bit of a bite to it, there should be resistance not crunch.
Now you need to chop the garlic and chillies, quantities of which depend on the fatness of the cloves and the heat of the chillies. I buy regular supermarket garlic, they are all pretty much the same, and use four cloves, peeled and finely chopped.
Note: If the cloves are particularly thin, use a bit extra, if you think "Good lord that's a fat clove of garlic" use a bit less. Actually, I think only I would think "God lord that's a fat clove of garlic" but you get my point. To quickly peel the garlic, chop the bottom off and place the flat of your knife blade on top of the clove, put your hand on top and push down until you feel the clove burst. This splits the clove and means you can pull the skin off quickly, usually in one bit.
The red chillies that most supermarkets sell, sometimes with their equivalent in green, are probably medium in heat and I would use two of them. Use one if you aren't sure, you can always add another one if it lacks a kick. You don't want too much heat, just a kick, so you can taste the chilli and the garlic. I grow cayenne (hot) chillies amongst my peppers and I use two of those, halved with the membrane and seeds scraped out, then sliced into little crescents.
Note: I try to wear latex gloves (like doctors wear, you can get them from Homebase etc in the decorating section cheaper than elsewhere and in bulk) as the chilli heat tends to linger on hands and hurts like hell in the eyes. The heat is the membrane, the pale stuff that holds the seeds, so if you want to reduce the hear scrape off as much as possible.
If you hate chopping and/or are feeling lazy, invest in one of those hand blenders that come with a little bowl attachment, mine was a present actually so can't think of the name but I think it's this one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-HR1363-Blender-Chopper-Accessory/dp/B000LYSSWW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328979483&sr=8-1 - in which case you can just put the peeled cloves of garlic and deseeded chilli halves in there and whizz them up. Saves ages of dull chopping.
Heat the oil until, well, hot and then turn the heat down to medium or lowish. Add the chilli and garlic and fry gently, stirring it about for two or three minutes until both are soft. Dip you finger in to taste, if it needs another chilli now's the time to add it. Take the pan off the heat, off it not just turning the heat off, and grate the lemon zest into the pan, squeeze the lemon and add the juice to the pan.
Once the linguine's done (remember to test a bit for al dente), drain it, don't shake it too much you want to retain a bit of the cooking water about the linguine, and pour the pasta into the sauce. Always add the pasta to the sauce, for all pasta dishes, always add the pasta to the sauce not the other way round. Season with a good pinch of sea salt and pepper, then mix well.
Serve with a crunchy green salad (little gem or cos lettuce maybe) and a balsamic vinegar dressing (3 parts extra virgin olive oil, 1 part balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper all shaken up in a jam jar).
As an alternative version, add a couple of handfuls of raw tiger prawns (or as big as you can get, not the little ones though, just don't add any in that case) to the frying of the garlic and chilli (raw if possible, look in the frozen section where they're cheaper, if you can only get cooked ones then put them in once the pan is off the heat and stir them in to warm through. Overcooked prawns are nasty and chewy. Then add a bag of rocket once the pasta's in and stir it through. The prawns work wonderfully with the garlic and chilli plus the rocket adds to the lemoniness and provides a nice fresh edge.
No comments:
Post a Comment