The first nettles of the 2012 season for us.
While the spaghetti cooks, gently fry garlic & anchovies in extra virgin olive oil. Then add nettles to the pan and cover till they wilt. Season with salt, ground black pepper and lemon juice. Mix through lightly drained spaghetti with a good handful of finely grated Parmesan cheese. Delicious!
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The Legendary Wild Haggis as pictured by StaraBlazkova
Haggis is one of my most favourite savoury meat dishes. It’s spiced and has a nutty smoothness. It’s a great way of using offal and an economical make-ahead dish. Traditionally it’s made with a sheep’s heart, lungs and liver (the ‘pluck’), mixed with oatmeal, suet, onions and spices and packed into the sheep’s stomach. It’s then boiled till cooked.
It’s mostly associated with the Scots now and Burn’s Night celebrations on the 25th January. According to Wiki its origins could come from Scandinavia through to Greece. As anyone who knows anything about butchering fresh killed meat, the offal will spoil quickly, so it seems logical to use what you have to hand to cook it asap after the kill.
Anyway, it’s something I’ve made a version of at home a few times and really enjoyed. I’ve used a few different people’s recipes and thought it was time I came up with my own version. I made this during the festive break and had it with a pearl barley risotto one day and then as a lasagne the next as you can see here. My version is cooked in a saucepan, not in a sheep’s stomach or in an ox bung (big sausage skin).
So here’s my haggis recipe, from Wales (via London).
Would you like to have a go? Read on… Continue reading »
Like many English people, I have a love affair with Corsica. It’s partly because of this:
Corsica has a fantastic blend of Mare et Monte: sea and mountains. It’s why I live in North Wales, to be with môr a mynydd. But Corsica smells different too: it has the maquis. The maquis is a mixture of fragrant shrubs and herbs that lead Corsica to be called The Scented Isle.
Corsica is also famous for growing and using the fruit of the sweet chestnut tree. Some of the nuts are converted into flour and Corsican cuisine is famous for how it uses this: in a type of ‘polenta’, pancakes, flans, muffins, cakes and pasta.
I loved eating in Corsica and resolved to get a cookery book. It just so happens that the Corsican cookery book is written by an Englishwoman, Rolli Lucarotti. She sailed to Corsica in the 1970s with her husband and baby daughter. She fell in love with Corsica and, like many English people, now lives there. Her book is called Recipes from Corsica. It’s a great read and insight into a unique cuisine that has developed separately from that of it’s French & Italian invaders.
This recipe Rolli calls Panzarotti incu brocciu: cheese ravioli. The pasta is Pasta di castagna: chestnut flour pasta. Brocciu is called The Prince of Cheeses and is the Corsican national cheese. It’s like an Italian ricotta but made with sheep or goat’s milk, so it’s good for the lactose intolerant. Since I had a method for making ricotta, I thought I could make a close replica of brocciu. And I have now found a source of organic chestnut flour. The recipe calls for calamint (calamentha nepeta) which my friend Carla Tomasi had recently sent to me from Rome where she calls it mentuccia. The recipe also needs eggs & chard. Our chickens produce eggs and we grow chard, so I was in business to make this wonderful dish. Want to know how? Read on… Continue reading »
I just love pizzoccheri. The dish is robust & earthy in taste & feel: a true peasant meal. It’s made with buckwheat pasta which is very easy to make or you can buy dried from Italian food stockists.
It’s a traditional recipe of the Valtellina in Lombardy, Northern Italy. Classically it’s made with the buckwheat pasta layered with chard or savoy cabbage, potatoes and cheese all dressed with a garlic & sage butter.
One of the joys of the dish is its flexibility. You can make it all year round with whatever veg is to hand. It’s ideal for using the bits and bobs you might pick from the garden or have in a veg box. This is my interpretation of this classic using a mix of seasonal vegetables from my garden. and I show you how easy it is to make the buckwheat pasta.
Fancy having a go? Read on… Continue reading »
This pasta is a bit of a show stopper. It looks just great on the plate and there are loads of variations you could make to the filling.
I’d often looked at the recipe in Jamie’s Italy and decided that it was a bit too much of a faff to do. Then I saw the Rotolo that Maureen at Orgasmic Chef had created. I really liked the result she achieved and so determined to have a go myself. Of course, I wanted to do something a bit different to the recipe in the book with spinach and roasted squash.
I thought hard about colours and took the Italian Flag’s tricolor of green, white and red as my inspiration.
For the green I used our abundant (and free) nettles instead of the pasta.
For the white I used ricotta that I made.
And for the red I used tasty cherry tomatoes.
The nettle filling gives a unique ‘meaty-veggy’ taste with a great slight spicy edge. The tomatoes give a nice squish and flavour with slight acid balanced by the creamy cheese. The lemon-thyme butter was a lovely fresh tasting complement to the pasta.
Want to know how to make this? Read on… Continue reading »