Tuesday 19th of March 2013

I tried out another new meal idea in the slow-cooker tonight.  I've seen the idea of a crock-pot lasagne on Pinterest, not to mention on various other websites and blogs I dip in and out of.  I rather fancied the idea.  So, I got to concocting my own version.

All in all, I considered tonight to be a successful first attempt; the flavours were good, if a little under-seasoned.  What let the dish down, rather, was the rather 'solid' texture.  Not dry, exactly, but I prefer my lasagne to be rather sloppier; oozing across your plate and into the salad.  I also must confess that wiping juicy sauces up with my garlic bread (shop-bought, tonight, for speed) is, to my mind, one of the very greatest pleasures of a pasta supper.

So it's back to the drawing board, not for an entirely new sheet of (metaphorical) paper, but perhaps a little fine-tuning and redrawing of lines.  I'll keep you posted...

Cath xx

Sunday 17th of March 2013

I find it hard to believe that I've never posted a recipe for good old macaroni cheese but, probably assuming that it isn't beyond the reach of anyone over the age of about 10, I just appear not to have bothered.  In any case, that is what we had for lunch today, accompanied by a very simple tomato salad.  I cannot urge you enough to consider mint as well as basil, in your tomato salad, these two herbs in combination, along with a smattering of flaky sea salt, make for a truly superlative salad (even if the tomatoes you have are slightly less than desirable perfection...)

Macaroni Cheese (just in case...)

250g macaroni
40g butter
30g flour
2 tsp mustard powder
500ml milk
100g grated strong cheddar
50g grated parmesan

Cook the macaroni in plenty of salted, boiling water.  Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large-ish saucepan and stir in the flour and mustard powder to make a roux.  Pour in the milk, still stirring, and bring the sauce to the boil.  Turn the heat down and simmer the sauce until it thickens.  Remove from the heat and stir in the grated cheddar.  Drain the pasta and tip it into an ovenproof dish.  Pour over the cheese sauce and mix thoroughly to coat the pasta completely.  Top with the grated parmesan and bake at 190ºc for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is crisp and golden.  I like it to be slightly scorched in places, too... Leave the dish, out of the oven, to rest for five minutes.  This will improve the flavour, as it won't be napalm-hot when served.

Cath xx

Courgette & Salami Pasta

My mandoline slicer is one of those things that comes out only rarely, but when I do use it, I wonder why don't I use it more often?  I suspect the answer is probably that it lives in its box in a cupboard, whereas the KitchenAid and the Magimix are out on the kitchen worktop.  And I forget all about it, sometimes. And I'm a bit lazy.

Never mind, because 'the mandoline' really is the perfect tool for the job in the case of tonight's recipe.  Take the courgettes and use the fine julienne blade to cut them into the thinnest matchstick strands imaginable.  And if my distracted and oft-cackhanded self can manage this, so can anyone!.  The heat of the pasta water will soften them as the pasta drains through the colander, no problem.  If you don't have a mandolin, don't worry - you don't have to buy one!  However, please don't try to knife-cut these incredibly thin strands of courgette; it'll send you potty, I should imagine.  Just coarsely grate the courgettes instead; the texture will be a little different but the recipe will still work and taste good.

Courgette & Salami Pasta

150g short pasta (such as penne or fusilli)
150g salami, cut into thin strips
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
3 courgettes (prepared as above)
handful mixed fresh parsley & basil, torn up
handful freshly grated parmesan

First, put some water on to boil for the pasta.  Now, 'frizzle' the salami.  Put the strips into a dry frying pan and heat gently until the oil starts to run.  Turn the heat up and cook, stirring, until the edges of the salami start to 'catch' and curl then remove the pieces with a slotted spoon and drain it on kitchen paper.  Add the chopped garlic to the oily juices in the pan, stir well, then remove it from the heat   Tip the pasta into the now boiling water and cook until tender.  Put the prepared courgettes into a colander in the sink and then, reserving a small cupful of pasta water, drain the pasta into the same colander (i.e. emptying the pan contents over the top of the shredded courgettes).  Return the contents of the colander to the pan and put over a low heat.  Pour in the garlicky salami oil and toss well to coat the pasta-and-courgette mixture, then stir the salami pieces through, along with the torn herbs, adding a splash of the reserved pasta water if it seems at all stodgy.  Tip into a warmed serving dish and scatter with the parmesan.

Cath xx

Souper, Smashing, Great...

I adore this soup, based of stock with lots of of good things added.  It can so easily be varied by changing very little. I sometimes make a more 'Spanish' version by swapping the bacon for chorizo, the beans for chickpeas and the pesto for smoked paprika.  However, my most usual soup of the type is this; filling and rustic in an Italian style...

I keep a couple of bags of the shredded leek-and-carrot mix in the freezer; I find it to be so much less hassle to do a big session of chopping once in a while than to have to start knife work every single time!  A couple of handfuls of the mixture is enough for one batch of soup and defrosts ever so quickly - I suspect that you could probably could use it straight from frozen, but I've never tried. **UPDATE: I now have, and you can! **

Bean & Bacon Soup with Small Pasta

I generally use macaroni, as I keep that in the storecupboard as a matter of course; you can always substitute another small 'soup' pasta (like conchigliette), or just use some broken-up bits of spaghetti.  This amount feeds all four of us comfortably, with enough left over for two small portions for lunches in the week.  It freezes well, too.

200g bacon, chopped up roughly
1 leek, halved and sliced
2 carrots, diced
1.5 litres chicken stock
2 tbsp pesto 
150g small pasta (and see above)
2x 300g cans borlotti beans, drained


Grated parmesan, to serve

Heat a very little oil in a large pan.  Fry the bacon until cooked and tinged with brown.  Scoop the bacon out of the pan and set aside.  Put the leek and carrot into the pan and fry until soft.  Add a little of the chicken stock and scrape up all the nice toasty bits that have 'caught' on the bottom of the pan, then put the bacon back in the pan, pour in the rest of the stock and bring to the boil.  Add the pesto and stir well, then tip in the pasta and cook for five minutes.  Add the beans and continue to cook until the pasta is al dente.  Ladle into warm bowls and serve, topped with plenty of freshly grated parmesan.

Cath xx

Antipasto Antipasta?

The pairing of tuna and butter beans makes for a classic Italian antipasto, and a combination that I adore.  It also works well as a suppertime pasta dish and this is a simple recipe using mainly storecupboard ingredients, except for an onion, some parsley and a lemon (and if I can pick those up in our tiny, though fabulous, village post office then I'm sure no-one else will find too much of an excursion in them). As for the pasta, I am currently having a total linguine moment, so I used that tonight, but cavatappi and fusilli have worked equally well for me in the past.

Pasta with Tuna and Butter Beans

250g dried pasta (and see above)
200g can good-quality tuna in olive oil
1 small onion, halved and finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled
 can butter beans, drained and rinsed well.
chopped fresh parsley
grated zest of one lemon and a spritz of its juice
Cook the pasta.  Meanwhile, drain the tuna and reserve the oil.  Heat the oil in a heavy pan and fry the onion with the whole garlic cloves until the onion is very, very soft.  Tip in the butterbeans and turn in the oil until they are warmed through, then add the tuna to the pan with some parsley and the lemon zest.  Fold it all together carefully; try not to break the tuna up too much or the dish will lose its pleasing texture.  Drain the pasta (reserving some water from the pan) and toss it with the tuna-and-bean mixture, adding a little of the pasta water and a squeeze of lemon juice to bring the flavours and consistency together.  Please, no cheese...

 *****

We went to Pizza Express in the half-term holidays while we were on a shopping jaunt to Carmarthen and the children were freshly, as always, enamored of the famous dough balls with garlic butter.  Ever since, they have been regularly nagging me talking about them and finally I thought it was time I knocked up a home-style batch; driving to Carmarthen just for an order of dough balls would be extravagantly decadent in the extreme!

Dough Balls

450g strong white flour
7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
250ml warm water
 flour, fine semolina or cornmeal, to dust

garlic butter, to serve

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together and knead for 5 minutes.  Put the dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.  Knock the dough down and knead for another 5 minutes.  Re-cover and leave for another 30 minutes or so.  Divide the dough into 16 and roll into balls.  Place on a floured baking sheet and dust them with a little bit of flour (or, even better, a little fine semolina or cornmeal/polenta flour).  Leave for 30 minutes until puffed up and then bake at 200°c for 15-20 minutes until tinged with gold.  Serve warm, with dishes of cool garlic butter on the side.  Dip the balls into the butter, or break them open and spread with the butter; your style, your choice.

Cath xx

Colourful Cookery

Sometimes, changing just one thing can make something rather dull into something really rather fabulous.  On a shopping trip last week, the children and I popped into the local heath food store to buy some spices.  While we were there, we spotted this gorgeous-looking lumaconi (meaning: snail's shells) pasta.  Unable to resist any sort of novelty, we just had to bring some home...

This red-and-white pasta bake is something I have made for the children before,  but trust me, it has finally achieved greatness and become all that it can be with the introduction of the new pasta; the sauces pool inside them, still remaining pleasantly separate and allow the surface to crisp beautifully.

 Red-and-White Pasta Bake

I usually have keep tomato sauce in the freezer in 500g portions, but you could just as easily use 400-500g's worth of some ready-made stuff.

300g lumaconi
500g tomato sauce
25g butter
25g plain flour
1 tsp mustard powder
3/4 pint milk
40g Red Leicester Cheese, grated
80g Cheddar cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in lots of salted water until just al dente.  Meanwhile, put the flour, mustard powder and butter into a saucepan with the milk and bring to the boil, whisking continuously.  When the sauce has thickened, stir in half the Cheddar cheese and set the pan aside.  Mix the rest of the Cheddar and the Red Leicester together.  Drain the pasta into a colander and transfer it to an ovenproof dish (the pasta should, ideally, sit in one layer).  Pour the tomato sauce unevenly over the pasta, leaving some areas bare, filling some of the hollows and not others, etc.  Repeat with the cheese sauce; you should have a pleasant 'patchwork pasta' effect (or something like that, anyway!).  Scatter the mixed cheeses over and bake in a 180°c oven for 20-30 minutes, until the surface is crisp and browned.

The great thing about a pasta bake like this is that you can assemble it, up until the point of baking and then either pop it in the fridge for the next day, or even freeze it.  In that case, I suggest lining the ovenproof dish with a large piece of heavy-duty kitchen foil.  Once, cool, overwrap the food and pop it all in the freezer (only if your dish is freezer-safe; most are, but do check!).  Then, once the food is frozen solid, you can slip the food out of the dish with no difficulty and transfer the foil-wrapped parcel to a big ol' freezer bag.

Cath xx

Canne-loony

This is rather more fiddly than a lot of my midweek suppers, I'll grant you, but cannelloni al forno is lovely and I'm so won over to using these supermarket packets of 'fresh' lasagne sheets; it really is tiresome making one's own pasta whenever one wants to make cannelloni and the dried tubes you sometimes see for sale are, nine times out of ten, irreparably damaged by the time you get them home from the shop.  It's also, actually, quite nice sometimes to feel that you are doing a bit of 'real' cooking in the middle of the boring, workaday week; it seems to bring that expansive, weekend feeling even to a drizzly Tuesday evening.

Cannelloni al Forno with Tuna

1 onion, diced
2 sticks celery, diced
400g can tuna, drained
300g spinach, wilted and chopped
pack of 10 'fresh' lasagne sheets
500g carton passata
100g mozzarella, grated
 50g parmesan, grated

Heat some oil in a frying pan and soften the onion and celery together.  Stir in the tuna and the spinach and heat through.  Remove from the heat.  Put spoonfuls of the mixture onto each of the lasagne sheets and roll up from the longer side, making a 'tube', filled with the tuna mixture.  Place these 'tubes', in turn, in an ovenproof dish then, when all 10 are done, pour over the passata and scatter over the cheeses.  Bake for about half an hour in a 180°c oven.  Let it cool in the dish a littlew before you serve it, otherwise you'll be faced with tuna alla napalm!  Enjoy with salad, you could even add some garlic bread if you want a little more kitchen pootling to do...

Cath xx

Old Favourites

With a lovely weekend like this one has been and the children content to play for hours in the sunshine,I've done very little but sit in the garden, listening to the radio, leafing through magazines and, as the evening draws closer, drinking those stubby little bottles of French lager that just say 'summer' to me.  Last night, we barbecued some quickly home-made burgers with some sausages and revisited our old faithful barbecue side dishes of barbecued garlic mushrooms and brown rice salad.  The smell from the grill was fantastic, and sitting in the garden, just chatting, is a really terrific way to spend a warm Saturday evening (even if it did have to be cut short, all too abruptly, by the children rushing indoors for their weekly Doctor Who fix).

Tonight, I'm continuing the weekend's classic favourites theme by serving up my cheeky, cheaty pasta bake with a simple lettuce salad and no fuss whatsoever.  Then back into the garden...

Cath xx 

Oo-er, Saucy..!

Frozen chicken livers.  Not a phrase that immediately suggests anything terribly exciting but, man, I love these babies.  I keep a couple of cartons in the freezer most of the time; quick pâtes, warm salads and this delicious, hearty pasta dish need be barely more than a defrost away.  Satisfyingly, everything else for this recipe is readily available from the storecupboard and the garden so, as long as I remember to take the livers out of the freezer in the morning, supper can be a pretty fast construction, which is always good on a school night, isn't it? As a (slightly defensive) aside, yes, I know that a whole 500g pack of spaghetti is a trifle excessive for two adults and two children but it's lush and we're greedy.  In any case, my hubby can always be relied upon to relish any leftovers for his midnight 'lunch'.  Odd, yes, but this is the life of a night-worker...


Spaghetti with Saucy Chicken Livers

500g spaghetti
20g butter
1 tbsp oil
1 onion, peeled, quartered and sliced
large sprig rosemary, needles chopped
2 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
2x 227g cartons frozen chicken livers, defrosted
50ml dry sherry
150ml milk
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
handful fresh parsley, chopped

Cook the spaghetti in a pan of salted boiling water.  Meanwhile, melt the butter and oil together in a large pan and fry the onion with the rosemary until the onion is softened.  Toss the livers in the seasoned flour and add all this to the pan.  Fry until the livers are browned, then pour in the sherry.  Sizzle, sizzle, then pour in the milk and stir well to scrape up all the floury bits.  Mix in the mustard and bubble while the sauce thickens.  Stir in the parsley.  Drain the pasta, saving about 100ml of the water.  Toss the sauce through the drained pasta, then deglaze the liver cooking pan with the reserved pasta water and stir this through also.  Serve, without the addition of cheese, I feel.

Now to plan for the May Day bank holiday weekend...  I feel a bit of a kitchen frenzy coming on, hooray!

Cath xx

Pastiche-eo

This is one of our real family favourite that, while it bears a slight resemblance to, and carries the name of, a classic dish, probably bears no real resemblance to the same.  I have never been to Italy, and I have no formal cookery training so attaching an Italian name to this dish is rather cheeky, to say the very least.  A slightly easier undertaking for a weeknight than lasagna al forno, but just as satisfying to serve and eat

Pasticcio

One quantity of meat sauce
couple of handfuls dried macaroni, cooked

When the meat sauce and the macaroni are cooked, mx them together and put into the bottom of a large ovenproof dish.  Set aside while you make a white sauce with;

1 pint milk
40g plain flour
40g butter, cubed
freshly grated nutmeg (we like LOTS)
ground white pepper, to taste

Put the milk, flour, butter and pepper into a saucepan and bring to the boil, whisking all the time. When it boils add the nutmeg, turn the heat down and simmer, still whisking, for a couple of minutes more.

Por this sauce on top of thre meat-and-macaroni mixture, then scatter over a topping of mixed breadcrumbs and grated cheese.  Pop the dish in the oven and bake for 30 mninutes at 180°c unmtil golden browen on top and really sizzling.  Leave the dish to sit and rest for a few moments before you serve.

This is one of those suppers that (all) my boys would eat and eat (and eat and eat!).  Leftovers are lovely reheated the next day for lunch, on the rare occasions that I manage to claw some back for that purpose...

Cath xx

There's a Leek in the Pot!

Another day, another quickly assembled pasta meal with whatever ingredients are handy...  This one went down really well tonight and I suspect it will now become one of my regular supper standbys, and a bit of a bargain supper too, really.  We (almost) always have the ingredients in stock, especially now that I have discovered the advantages of keeping a bag of frozen,sliced leeks in the freezer.  I first picked them up as a bit of a novelty purchase (see how rock 'n' roll my life is..!) but am now devoted to them for dishes like this, where you want a touch of allium flavour but not a whole load of onion getting in the way.  For casseroles and such I just bung them in from frozen, but when I cook them in dishes like this, I give them a quick whizz round in the microwave, to just defrost them.  You could just as easily soak them in some boiling water to defrost, refresh them under the cold tap and drain them really well.   A lifesaver, nonetheless.

Mustardy Sausage Pasta Pot

300g pasta

4 sausages (I like Porkinson's), skinned

1 leek or equivalent frozen (and see above)

1 tbsp mustard (use your favourite)
100g créme fraîche
handful of watercress, roughly torn up

50g parmesan, grated

Put the pasta on and heat some fat in a wide frying pan.  Break the skinned sausages into chunks and fry them, with the leeks, until the sausages are browned and everything is nicely cooked through.  Stir the mustard into the créme fraîche and swirl this into the pan with the sausages. Reserve a cupful of pasta water, then bung in the watercress in with pasta, stir and  then drain it immediately.  Return the pasta and watercress to the pan, tip the saucy sausage back in and throw in the parmesan.  Mix well, adding some of the reserved pasta water to keep the sauce nice and liquid, so it clings to the pasta without being 'claggy'.

Cath xx

Cook's Nip(ping Out)

Today has been a busy day for me. I've been out at a study workshop since this morning(which, luckily, had a créche for the children), so first thing, just before leaving, I bunged a seasoned chicken in the slow-cooker and left it there to cook while we were out. The thought of coming home to dinner being mostly cooked was a huge comfort and allowed me to concentrate on the matter at hand.

In fact, it was such a comfort that tonight's dinner became rather more than the chicken and salad I had anticipated. Having been relaxed about not having to cook a meal when I got home, I suddenly felt like doing EXACTLY what I had thought I would NOT want to do. So 'chicken and salad' became 'chicken with creamy bacon and pea pasta and salad'.

Creamy Bacon & Pea Pasta

This is really rather lovely as a side dish with chicken, but it also works very well as a meal in its own right. I left the quantities roughly the same as for a main meal, as I can freeze the leftovers for quick children's meals in weeks ahead.

200g dry pasta shapes
150g chopped bacon
50ml chicken stock or white wine
100g créme fraîche
2 tbsp tomato purée OR 6 tbsp tomato (pasta) sauce
100g frozen peas, defrosted
25g parmesan, grated
chopped parsley

Put the pasta on to cook. Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a very little fat until it is just crisp. Splash in the wine or stock to deglaze the pan. Stir in the créme fraîche and tomato purée or sauce, then add the peas, the parmesan and the parsley. Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the water, then toss the pasta with the sauce. Add some of the reserved water if you need to moisten the finished dish, to help the sauce coat the pasta and remain silky and delicious.

Add a plate of salad leaves and, actually, that was rather more than the dull chicken dinner I was expecting to produce.

Cath xx

Help!

Perfect for those (regular, in my house) "what on earth am I cooking for supper" moments, this is a pasta bake (yum - my favourite) with bits and bobs hauled from the fridge after one of those blind-staring moments at the open door. I always think that savoy cabbage is a winner with ham or bacon anyway, but this was certainly proved to be so tonight. I think this recipe is most definitely a keeper and up for regular repetition (without hesitation, but as always with me, a little deviation from time to time). It went down well with the children (and the husband who, it must be said, is a darn sight fussier than either of the kids).

Cabbage & Bacon Pasta Bake

200g dried pasta shapes
8 savoy cabbage leaves, sliced
200g smoked bacon, chopped
1/2 pint milk
20g butter
20g cornflour
1 tsp mustard powder
100g strong cheddar, grated

Cook the pasta and the cabbage in p[laenty of boiling salted water. Meanwhile, fry the bacon until just cooked and heat the milk, butter, mustard and flour in a pan, whisking until the sauce boils and thickens. Combine the drained pasta and cabbage, the bacon and the sauce and tip into an ovenproof dish. Top with grated cheese and a good grind of pepper. Bake for 15 minutes at 200°c, the ideal temperature and timing for a frozen loaf of garlic bread to go in alongide, hehehe.

Summer? What Summer?

Well, the weather continues to be, frankly, crap. Neither cold and wet nor warm and dry; just kind of cloudy and damp all the time, with temperatures all over the shop. It sure makes it hard to know what to wear in the morning.

As well as my sartorial objections, the indecisive weather makes it difficult to know what to plan for meals, and some days everything just feels back-to-front. Tonight was a good example, when the dish was light, fresh-tasting and summery and the weather outside, well, wasn't. Oh well, it tasted good and that's the main thing. I used frozen soy beans for this, but you could substitute broad beans or peas. Equally the cheese could be ricotta, and feel free to use whatever tortellini filling you prefer. Think of it as a kind of moveable feast...

Summery (ha!) Tortellini

zest of 1 lemon and half its juice
50ml olive oil
handful fresh mint leaves, chopped
2x250g packs of 'fresh' spinach & ricotta tortellini
150g frozen soy beans (and see above)
150g soft(ish) goat's cheese

Put the lemon zest and juice in a small bowl with half the chopped mint and pour in the olive oil. Whisk together and set aside, while you put the water on for the pasta. Boil the tortellini and the soy beans until tender, the drain. Heat the lemony oil, then return the pasta and beans to the pan, stirring well to coat in the oil. Crumble the cheese in and mix through briefly, then tip into warmed bowls to serve.

Competitive Cooking?

I was quite nervous about cooking this tonight; it was by request, but Hubby makes a mean Bacon & Mushroom Pasta and I wasn't sure that my version would live up to (largely the kids') expectations. Never mind, it was a roaring success - and clean plates all round!

Pasta with Creamy Bacon & Mushroom Sauce

350g dried pasta
30g butter
1/2 onion, finely chopped
200g bacon, chopped
150g mushrooms, chopped
200ml single cream
75g cheese, grated

Put the pasta on to cook in plenty of salted, boiling water. Melt the butter and soften the onion, before adding the bacon and mushrooms. Cook for a few minutes, then stir in the cream. Grind in plenty of pepper and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for a few minutes until the sauce begins to reduce. Add the cheese to the pan and mix well so that it melts into the cream. Drain the pasta and toss in the sauce.

We had some garlic bread (and also see my notes here on an easy shortcut to avoid the packet stuff) with it; well buttered and oozy. Dee-lish.

Friday Night Noodles

Of course, you don't have to cook them on a Friday night but I find, more and more, that we have them as a kick-off to the weekend. I do the shopping towards the end of the week, so there's always a good selection of vegetables to choose from. The recipe is only a blueprint; I vary the veg according to what we've got and rotate between chicken, turkey, beef and pork depending on what I fancy when I'm shopping or what someone else fancies when I'm planning the week's meals and making the shopping list.

Kinda Chow Mein-ish Noodles

200g dried egg noodles
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2cm piece ginger root, peeled and minced
3 spring onions, finely sliced
400g diced turkey thigh meat
4 tbsp dry sherry
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp cornflour
2 carrots,
1 stick celery
1 x 225g can bamboo shoots
1/2 green pepper, sliced
1/2 yellow pepper, sliced
100g sweetcorn, defrosted if frozen

Soak the noodles in boiling water from the kettle until soft, then drain them and separate the strands. Put the garlic, ginger and spring onions into a large pan with the cold oil, then heat up until sizzling. Add the turkey meat and stir-fry until sealed all over. Meanwhile, whisk together the sherry, tomato purée, soy sauce and cornflour. Pile the vegetables and noodles into the pan, then pour over the sauce and mix well. Add 200ml water and cover the pan. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the turkey is cooked through, the sauce has thickened, and the vegetables are just tender. Give it a good stir and serve straight from the pan.

'Millions' of Cheese

I've been enjoying getting Christopher's input on ideas regarding what to have for dinner lately. He's come up with some pretty sensible suggestions too, most of the time, so as well as letting him decide what he fancies, it allows me to (subtly, I hope) help him learn to make good choices about putting a meal together; from both a gustatory and a nutritional point of view.

Yesterday, a friend and I took our children over to the Teifi Mania soft-play centre in Cardigan , for lunch and some seriously rambunctious playtime. This gave us a chance for coffee and a gossip while the children were burning off some of that excess weekend energy, knowing that they'd all be both starving for supper, and tired for bedtime when we got home.

On the way home in the car, I asked Chris what he fancied for supper. He immediately replied "pasta!" and then, thinking for a moment, added that he wanted it "with MILLIONS of cheese..."
I actually decided that, just maybe, four cheeses would be enough, so, taking inspiration from the flavours of a Quattro Formaggio pizza, I used it as a starting point for a pasta bake, which we ate with gusto, and some lettuce cut from the garden.


Four-Cheese Pasta Bake

These are the cheeses that I had, but you could easily substitute a different blue cheese and a different hard cheese, perhaps Cheddar, for the Double Gloucester.

500g dried pasta shapes
40g butter
40g cornflour
1 pint milk
75g Danish Blue cheese, diced
2 x balls mozzarella, diced
80g Double Gloucester, grated
50g Parmesan, grated

Put the pasta on to cook. Meanwhile, put the butter, cornflour and milk into a sucepan and brting to the boil, whisking continously, and simmer until thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in the blue cheese and 2 tablespoons of water from the pasta pan. Drain the pasta. Stir the blue cheese sauce and the mozzarella pieces through it, then transfer it to an ovenproof dish. Top with the grated Double Gloucester and Parmesan, then bake in a 180­°c oven for 15 minutes or so, until the cheesy surface is melted and bubbling, but only just tinged with brown.

There was enough, with salad, for all four of us for a really filling and enjoyable dinner, and enough left over to reheat for the children's (and possibly my) lunch, later today.

Minest-phoney

This is for the days when I feel, shall we say, a touch harried. Being able to set the table and put out some bread and cheese while this (ersatz, but none the worse for it, taste-wise) soup gets together calms me down, and the sheer fact of a (semi) home-cooked meal makes even a tense day seem calmer.

Minestrone 'Molto Pronto'

500ml vegetable stock (or chicken, if you prefer)
300g 'special mixed' frozen vegetables
400g can chopped tomatoes
400g can pasta in tomato sauce

Bring the stock to the boil and tip in the still-frozen vegetables. Cook for a couple of minutes, then add the contents of both the cans, stirring well. Season with plenty of black pepper (I don't bother with salt; those cans of pasta-in-sauce are quite salty enough). Leave to heat through thoroughly on a medium setting.

If you always have the wherewithal to cook a panful of this in the house, you'll never struggle for dinner, and it's one that will delight children and adults alike. So cheap, too (ignoring the approximate ton of cheese we always put away when I make this for supper) - I used bargain basics tomatoes and spaghetti in tomato sauce tonight; it tasted no different to when I've made it with the fancier equivalents. You can ring the changes for those fickle enfants terribles by using different types of character pasta-in-sauce too - Spiderman has been particularly popular in our house - and I love making it with Alphabetti ! I'm easily pleased, I know, but the little letters (and you can now get Numberetti) always make me smile.

Stories and Sausage

Today was a hugely inspirational day; I took James to an event at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, called (rather naffly) "Check It Out!", aimed at giving parents access to a number of local organisations with an interest in helping them out in various ways. We met some really interesting people and went away with a lot to think about. There was also the usual haul of freebies to be had - promotional balloons, keyrings, pens and the like.

After lunch, we listened to a talk from the author and inventor of StorySacks, Neil Griffiths. The only word is WOW - that guy can sure tell a good tale! Such a simple thing, and he makes it look so easy to do it really well - but did you know that 1 in 9 children have never been read to at home? Or that in some ares of the U.K. that figure increases to 1 in 2? That's right, HALF. I bought a couple of books while we were there, picking up Neil Griffiths' Itchy Bear and a (bilingual) Welsh book, Tynnu llun gyda sialc from a local company @ebol.

When we'd finished for the day, and picked Christopher up from nursery school, we pootled home. I started dinner faily swiftly when it became clear that I had two hungry, over-tired boys on my hands. Why is it that the more tired children get, the more active and obstreperous they become? So I was really glad that, not only was I feeding the children and we adults separately tonight, but that theirs was to be a simple and quick pasta dish.

Spicy Sausage Pasta

I defrosted a package of my homemade tomato sauce, but use a favourite bought one if you'd rather. Equally, replace the saucisson with any other 'slicing' sausage or salami.

100g pasta shapes
200g tomato sauce (and see above)
40g saucisson sec
4-6 pitted black olives
scant pinch chilli flakes
chopped fresh parsley

Put the pasta on to cook in lots of boiling water. Meanwhile, chop the sausage and olives roughly and put them into a pan with the tomato sauce. Reheat slowly, stirring in the chilli flakes and parsley. Drain the cooked pasta and toss with the sauce, topping it with parmesan to serve.

Noshy Gnocchi

Much as I do love a pasta bake (and plan one for tomorrow evening), I' d never cooked anything with gnocchi until tonight. Tearing a riff on a favourite pasta recipe seemed appropriate, though, so I knocked up some blue cheese sauce and replaced the broccoli with spinach (yum...).

We started with a platter of Antipasti (read: I foraged in the fridge for anything feeling remotely Italianate and laid it all out on my big SYNTES SKISS plate from IKEA. With a glass of breadsticks and another holding celery it was a respectable first course that encouraged the children to try a little of everything, though not to like it all straightaway. As I'd included olives and anchovies, I was not particularly surprised!

Gnocchi with Spinach & Blue Cheese Sauce

The gnocchi I used was 'The Best' from the chiller cabinet at Morrisons. If you'd rather make this into a pasta bake, just substitute an equal amount of cooked pasta (i.e. about 200g -250g dry weight) for the gnocchi and proceed with the rest of the recipe.

30g cornflour
30g butter
1 pint milk

Put all three ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil, whisking all the time.

200g Danish Blue cheese, chopped

When the sauce has thickened, remove it from the heat and stir in the blue cheese, along with some pepper (but no salt)

2 big handfuls spinach leaves, washed
500g pack 'fresh' gnocchi


Wilt the spinach by putting it into a colander and pouring a kettleful of boiling water over it. Squeeze the excess water out with tongs and arrange this with the gnocchi in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Pour the sauce over, pushing everything down well to cover it.

50g fresh parmesan, grated
50g breadcrumbs

Mix together and sprinkle over the top of the gnocchi. Bake at 200°c for 15-20 minutes until golden on top and bublling around the edges.