Before work tortellOni

Been meaning to do a recipe for the blog for ages, clearly i haven't managed it in a fair while...

It is actually more time consuming than you'd think - you gotta think of a half decent recipe you fancy cooking, gather all the ingredients, take snaps, cook, take more snaps, wash up the chaos and then search for about an hour for that bloody cable which connects your camera to laptop, then write it up.

not easy to fit in around restaurant hours (plus ave mostly been doing 6 days a week of late)...pretty obvious why not many chefs have blogs.

Anyhow, here's a somewhat rushed recipe i did before a late (2pm) start at work recently. I decided to do pasta, mainly because I've got a good Italian deli right nr my place (see G Gazzano & Sons here), & it had some really good looking sausages.

So sausage pasta it was....

Tortelloni with sausage meat & a quick tomato & basil sauce.

I'd have normally called them tortellini but after being corrected by a slightly snotty Italian waiter at Bocca Di Lupo (he re-pronounced everything i ordered back to me, as if we were speaking different languages...e.g I'd order "cassata" and he'd look at me an check that i meant "cassata" ...erm yeah, "cassata" please...!???).

Anyhow he was right on the oni -ini front; they're both the same shape it's just that "ini" are smaller than "oni", the ones below are the same size as the BDL ones...so tortelloni it is.

Pretty simple recipe, and fairly quick when you get used to the making of the pasta / folding bit.


Ingredients (serves 2)

Pasta (this is a basic recipe here but if you like it richer you can add more yolk than whole egg, just adjust the volume of egg / amount of flour accordingly with experience):

• 200g Italian pasta flour (type 'OO')
• 2 large organic free range eggs
• dash of EV olive oil

Stuffing

• 2 - 3 Italian sausages
• 1 - 2 shallots, chopped fine
  
• a little beaten egg
• a some herbs or flavourings e.g few fennel seeds, chilli flakes, little chopped fresh thyme or rosemary etc
• Parmesan
  

Sauce:

• 1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
  
• EV olive oil
• a clove of garlic, finely chopped
  
• a bunch of basil, leaves picked
  

Method:

Make pasta dough - if you already know how to knock up fresh pasta then skip this and use your favourite method:

• i almost always use a food processor for this for ease (and because most restaurants I've worked in do too), though if your processor is huge you might want to do by hand if your doing the smallish quantity above.
• Processor method basically = sieve flour in to processor bowl, add pinch salt and splash of oil, mix your eggs in bowl then tip in and pulse until well mixed (should form tiny balls), tip out on to work surface and push together to form ball of dough.
• Knead a little and cover with cling film and, ideally, rest for an hour (now you get your filling made, and get the stuff ready for your sauce - see below).
• Cut the dough in 2 and keep one piece aside (covered).
• Roll out your pasta to the thinnest setting on the machine, you can do this through any method you please but i think best results come from the folding and turning method (see guide by Giorgio here).
• Cut resulting long sheet sheet into squares about width of a credit card. Put a portion of filling in middle of each then brush around with a little water or beaten egg and fold (see here), place on some clingfilm or lightly floured surface until ready to cook.

Filling:

• Take the skin off the sausages and roughly chop / crumble the meat.
  
• Sweat the finely chopped shallot off in little olive oil or even butter, add any herb, fennel seeds or whatnot now and then the meat making sure you break it up in the pan so it doesn't clump up. Cook for a couple of mins or until just cooked through. Tip in to a bowl to cool.
• When cooled a bit add a touch of beaten egg to bind, a generous grating of Parmesan and taste to check seasoning.
• Put in fridge to chill before you use to stuff pasta.

A note on the tortelloni / ini thing here: an Italian friend Alessio (chef from Nahm, previously worked at Locanda etc) informs me that meat stuffings for tortelloni are cooked first (like i did here - phew!) whereas with tortellini meat is put inside raw (because they're so small that it cooks through in time that pasta does).

To finish:

• Get a large pan of salted water boiling ready for the pasta.
• Make the sauce by frying the chopped garlic in a large frying pan with a generous glug of olive oil, add the cherry tomatoes and cook until just collapsing, season then stir through the basil.
• Drop the pasta in to the water, cook for a couple of minutes only then transfer them with a slotted spoon to the sauce, toss together and cook for another minute in the frying pan and serve with grated Parmesan and perhaps another drizzle of nice EV olive oil.
  

Fresh pappardelle with slow roast tomatoes & pesto

A really simple one this, but is one of my fav pasta dishes and, while not exactly quick, it is easy, especially once you get (or if you are already) comfortable with making fresh pasta.

i've done a rough pesto here here but you could do pistou (no pinenuts or cheese) or even not bother and just scatter some basil leaves over the finished dish.

The secret to making this especially tasty is a) to make nice fresh pasta with good eggs and b) to buy good tomatoes and roast them nice n slow.

Fresh pappardelle with slow roast tomatoes & pesto












Ingredients (serves 2)

For the fresh pasta - this is basic recipe here but if you like it richer you can add more yolk than whole egg, just adjust the volume of egg / amount of flour accordingly to get the right consistency (soft but not sticky):

• 200g italian pasta flour (type 'OO')
• 2 large organic free range eggs
• dash of EV olive oil
  

For the slow roast tomatoes:

• best quality tomatoes - between 4 and 8, depending on the size
• a large clove of garlic
• some fresh thyme or dried oregano
• sea salt and fresh black pepper
• EV olive oil

For the pesto (use the below rough guide or whatever your fav recipe for pesto is):

• 1 bunch fresh basil, leaves picked (reserve a few leaves back for garnish)
  
• 1 large clove garlic
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of EV olive oil
• 1 tablespoon pine nuts
• 1 tablespoon grated parmesan
  

Method:

Make pasta dough - if you already know how to knock up some pappardelle then skip this:

• i almost always use a food processor for this for ease (and because most restaurants i've worked in do too), though if your processor is huge you might want to do by hand if your doing the smallish quantity above.
• Processor method basically = sieve flour in to processor bowl, add pinch salt and splash of oil, mix your eggs in bowl then tip in and pulse until well mixed (should form tiny balls), tip out on to work surface and push together to form ball of dough.
• Knead a little and cover with cling film and, ideally, rest for an hour (while you get your tomatoes and pesto done - see below).
• Roll out your pasta to the penultimate thickness on the machine, you can do this through any method you please but i think best results come from the folding and turning method (see guide by Giorgio here).
• Cut resulting sheet in to sections of pasta length (25cm or so, i guess) then cut these into wide strips - 4-5cm or so. You may need little flour or semolina to stop strips sticking to surface etc, but use only a very light dusting (otherwise you get gluey coating when cooked).

Tomatoes:

• Preheat oven to about 100 degrees C.
• Half your tomatoes (across the middle, not through the stalk end - see pic) and place cut side up on baking tray.
  
• Scatter with finely sliced garlic, thyme sprigs / pinch dried oregano, salt, pepper and then drizzle liberally with EV oil (option additions include few drops of good quality balsamic, few dried chilli flakes etc)
• Slow roast in oven for 1hr or even a bit longer.

Pesto:

• Reserve few basil leaves and then mash the rest with the other pesto ingredients - i like a pestle and mortar here, by all means use hand blender if you prefer.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To finish:

• Cook the pasta for about 2mins in large pot of boiling salted water, drain and toss with splash of EV olive oil, now divide between two bowls.
  
• Place tomatoes around and finish with large helping of pesto, scatter over few reserved basil leaves and drizzle with touch more olive oil.

Hmmm... feel like i made a v.simple recipe sound quite complex there!

Basically boils down to: make nice pasta, cut into pappardelle, slow roast tomatoes, make your fav pesto, put all these together and eat!














N.B great varation on this might involve adding torn pieces of buffalo mozarella to the plate at the end, in which case i'd probably then remove the pesto and just go with plenty of fresh basil leaves.

Fast food rant (and a crab pasta recipe!)

Ok, i've got tonnes of themes i'd like to blog about e.g Thai & Vietnamese herbs, dishes inspired by the restaurants i've worked at & my favorite sambos - to name just a few...

But! The thing i'm probably most passionate about is fast food...

Yep fast food! It's almost a swear word in this country. Why does so much of it (in the UK) have to be 'orrible!? You go to different countries all over the world (SEAsia, India, Italy, Lebanon etc!) step out on the street and there's a wealth of choice of quick, super tasty and often healthy food available to be knocked up for you in seconds.

I say we need a bit more of that over here? Why do we have no street stalls? Why is it that in 95% of cases fast food = fried chicken!?

Needs to change.

The other reason good fast food is the way forward iiiiis... that, obviously, it's quick and very often that means it's easy too. So if you dont have much time or dont like cooking all that much BUT you want to eat decent food then FF is the way forward.

I'm going to try and go about proving my point on this blog by doing a series of quick & tasty recipes which in my mind are Fast Food.

Plus! With my new full time chef's life imminent i'm going to be cooking much more of it myself i.e when i come home from a long shift hungry i'm invariably going to be looking to cook something quick, tasty and fairly healthy.

Ok, enough rambling, here's a recipe to start off with: crab pasta. It's tasty, healthy and quick. I spent 1 night a week for 6 months working at Refettorio - one of Giorgio's Italian places, and learned how Italians cook pasta. It's basically just the same for any other seafood pasta dishes so have a mess around.

It's 6 ingredients, 7 with the oil and is ready in the time it takes to cook pasta + 2mins.

Crab & tomato pasta.



Ingredients - serves 2 (any more is tricky, but doable, esp if you have a real large frying pan).

• enough pasta for 2 - linguine is perfect, but spaghetti or really any shape will taste good too)
• white crab meat - 3 or 4 tablespoons
  
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 mild red chilli
  
• a small bunch of parsley or basil
• a glass of white wine
  
• some olive oil
• 3 or 4 nice tomatoes

Method (to get it done super quick)

• Boil a full kettle and pour the hot water in a large pan, get it boiling and salt it generously
• Put the pasta in.
• Chop the garlic & chilli (small if you like but doesnt have to be perfect)
• Cut tomatoes in to quarters length ways then cut out the seeds and roughly dice.
• Chop a handful of parsley, if using basil just pick a bunch of leaves
• Stir your pasta so it dont stick together
• Put large frying pan on medium-high heat, add a couple of tablespoons olive oil
• Chuck in the chilli and garlic, fry for 30 seconds (dont let it color much)
  
• Chuck in the crab meat, season with salt and pepper, stir a couple of times then throw in the wine and let bubble for 30 secs
• Throw in your tomatoes, give them a stir and finally in with the herbs.
• If your pasta is ready, drain it and chuck it straight in the frying pan with a little of the pasta water too. If your pasta is not ready then just take the crab pan off the heat, when you are good to go put it back on a high heat.
• Stir all this through and then tuck in while it's hot.
  

N.B for more of a store cupboard number decent quality tinned white crab meat can be used here - it obviously wont be nearly as tasty, but still a nice enough quick meal.

Andy

Provence & my news

Ok firstly my major bit of news: i went in to Nahm today and finalised things - so i start my first full time cheffin job on 3rd of August!

So my new life starts then - think poverty, sleep deprivation, smelling of shallots on the night bus while heading home at some stupid time etc... but also COOKING, lots of cooking, plus loads to learn and spending lots of time with the great birgade of chefs from all over the world who work there.

Bring it on.

Now, to Provence...finally now back and have got round to gathering a few pics so i can post a snippet of my recent 8 days cooking (& chilling) in a lovely house plus vineyard in Provence.

Is a cliche but cooking out there was a real pleasure because of the quality of the produce. We had the local farmer character bring us various super fresh & yummy fruit an veg almost daily - courgettes, ugly but as-good-as-they-get tomatoes, basil, figs, plums etc. Plus using local olive oil, eating olives from the land, honey from the forest...you get the idea!

I was staying with & cooking for 'Mr & Mrs J' - two very nice people who really enjoy & understand good food, so that made it all the better. On a couple of occasions we also had guests for dinner - ex pats & the charming French farmers (+ plus families) who were concerned with turning out lovely wine from the property's vineyard.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Here's some pictures and a couple of associated rough recipes:



These are braised young artichokes (got pretty swift at preping these when doing a stage at Moro, they got through tonnes). I just prepped them down to tender part with help of speed-peeler, halved them then braised little water, olive oil, fresh thyme and a whole garlic clove or two. They're ready when tender to point of a knife. Squeeze of lemon and drizzle of oil and they're good to go.






Provencal fish stew...with pernod, orange, saffron and whatever fish was good on the day (monk & giant super fresh prawns in this case):




















In the foreground: crispy courgette flowers and slices of young courgette. I used a beneiget batter from a my Tom Aiken book - mostly 00 flour, but also cornflour & baking powder. Worked well, giving a light crisp result.



















Just some of the yummy fresh produce...which made my job easy (didnt need to do much to it to make tasty):



















Little crostini nibbles, marjoram leaves on top:















An ever-elegant 'Mrs J' picking up some choice produce at the local weekly market:
















And a couple of snaps of the produce at said market:


































Courgette carpaccio sort o thing...very finely sliced (i used my mandolin) courgettes, toasted with seasoning & a little white wine vinegar. Laid out nicely on a plate the scattered with toasted pinenuts, parmesan shavings and finished with good EV oil and more black pepper:




More lunchtime fodder: fried aubergine covered in diced roast red pepper & tomato, wine vinger oil and basil (similar to the pasta further down).















Tomato, olive, parsley & shallot salad - lemon & oil dressing, a lunchtime staple.














Below - maltagliati (rough cut flat pasta pieces) with roast red pepper, tomato olives and basil. Which is a really nice easy way with fresh pasta...you just role it to the penultimate thickness (i.e thickness for parpadelle etc) and then cut in to rough shapes. I then roasted and peeled a couple of big twisted red peppers, peeled and diced a bunch of good tomatoes and destoned a load of black olives. I put all of these in a bowl with few glugs of good EV olive oil, some finely chopped raw garlic and good red wine vinegar, seasoned and mixed. Cooked the pasta (2 mins in boiling salted), drained and added to a large pan with the red-tomato-olive mix, warmed through on medium heat for 2mins, added a load of fresh basil and served in pan - people can help themselves.

Pigeon Ravioli

I've had a few requests for the recipe for the pigeon ravioli dish I did in the first round of Masterchef. I was going to hold out until I cooked it again to take some snaps, but right now I can’t see when that’s going to happen so here’s the recipe sans pics (might add some in later)…

Pigeon ravioli with rosemary sauce and sautéed wild mushrooms

n.B squab pigeon is a farmed pigeon – plumper & more tender than wood pigeon, but also pricier (about £7 each). As an alternative pheasant works brilliantly here (as a guide substitute 1 pheasant breast for 2 squab pigeon breasts, and use legs or carcass for the sauce).

This recipe is about right to make 18 ravioli – so a main for 3 people (6 each) or a starter for 6 (3 each).

2 squab pigeon

A glass of medium dry white wine

250g of pasta flour (type ‘00’)

2 whole free range eggs and 2 free range egg yolks

extra virgin olive oil

500 ml of chicken stock (preferably dark)

1 carrot roughly chopped

4-5 shallots , chopped

50g of diced unsmoked Italian pancetta

50ml double cream

A black summer truffle or a drizzle of best quality truffle oil

1 bay leaf, and a little fresh nutmeg

Italian tomato puree

150g butter

A few sprigs of fresh rosemary

3 handfuls of mixed wild mushrooms – such as Morels, Chanterelles, Pied de Bleu and Horse mushrooms(you can bulk things out with some cultivated types, such as chestnut, if you like)

Method:

First make the pasta dough by sieving the flour in to a blender, adding the whole eggs and egg yolks plus a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil, then blend until well mixed. Empty the mix on to a work surface, push it together in to a ball and knead for a couple of minutes then cover in cling film and put aside to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile make the filling and sauce. Take the breasts off the pigeons, cut the rest of the pigeon carcass in to a few pieces and put it in a pan with some olive oil over a medium-high heat to brown, turning occasionally. Then add the chopped carrot, half the shallots, a teaspoon of tomato puree and a bay leaf. Cook for 5 minutes more then pour in the chicken stock, and bring to the simmer and allow it to reduce down to a third of its volume (this takes about 30 minutes). Strain through a sieve and set aside.

Take a frying pan and fry the pigeon breasts in a little olive oil, after a minute or so scatter over half the chopped shallots and the pancetta. Cook for a minute more, then turn the pigeon breast and cook for another 2 mins. Remove the pan from the heat, roughly chop up the breasts and place everything into a small blender. Add 2 tablespoons of double cream, some salt and pepper, a little grated nutmeg and a drizzle of truffle oil. Blend until a rough paste.

Now take the pasta dough, split it in half and roll it out to the thinnest setting on a pasta machine (you can just roll it through the settings but if you want the real deal you gotta do the folding and turning thing - see Giorgio's excellent guide here).

Do the same with the other half. Place a large teaspoon of the filling at intervals along half of each sheet then use a pastry brush and a little water to wet around each filling and fold the other half of the sheet over, pressing around the filling to seal. Cut out the ravioli with a pasta cutter and squeeze out any air with your fingers. Repeat with the other length of pasta - you should be able to get 9 out of each sheet without much trouble.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and then put in the ravioli. Meanwhile season your mushrooms and fry in olive oil and a little butter until just cooked – about 3 minutes.

Take out the ravioli and drain.

To finish the dish take a large frying pan, put it on a high heat, add some butter and fry a handful of rosemary needles for 30 seconds then pour in your reduced pigeon stock. Allow to bubble 7 reduce for 1 minute then throw in the drained ravioli, toss for another 30 sec together and divide them and the wild mushrooms between the plates (ravioli around the edge, pile of 'shrooms in the middle looks nice) with the sauce from the pan poured over the pasta.