bacon bocconcini basil pasta

This is one of the quickest and yummiest dinners you can make. Essentially it’s a warm pasta salad. I highly recommend it for both no-fuss entertaining and those tired week night dinners.

Pasta, fresh is best but dry is fine too
Bacon, sliced (fat and rind removed)
Red onion, sliced (not too thin)
Basil, roughly chopped
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Olive oil
Bocconcini or fresh mozzarella, roughly chopped
Rocket, torn, or use as a bed to place pasta on top of when plating up
Pine nuts, roasted*

Cook the pasta in some lightly salted water, then drain.
Fry bacon until browning then add onion.
Turn the heat off, add the tomatoes and basil to the pan. There is enough residual heat in the pan to warm the tomatoes, we don’t want them to turn to mush so no fiddle-fussing.
Combine pasta and with the bacon and tomato ‘sauce’, drizzle some olive oil in and give it a gentle mix. Add the rocket now if you are mixing it through.
Depending on how soft your bocconcini is you can mix it through the pasta (which is likely to melt it a little) or place it on top of each dish.
Finally, sprinkle with pine nuts.

* Dry fry your pine nuts in the same pan before you cook the bacon, that will save on the washing up. Don’t leave them alone, they burn and go bitter really quickly. Gently keep them moving and remove them as soon as they begin to turn golden.

italian lamb shanks

I’m talking Italian favours not imported shanks. This is simple peasant cooking, wholesome and hearty. The lamb shank makes a really easy to prepare, low cost and tasty dinner, so long as you have the time to cook it. The best shanks will spend at least 4 hours in a low to moderate oven.

Lamb shanks, trimmed of fat
Olive oil
1 Leek
1 Carrot
1 tbsp Tomato paste
Tin tomato
Oregano
Thyme
Rosemary
Parsely
Salt and Pepper
1 tsp sugar
Green beans*, top and tail
Parsley to garnish

Preheat the oven to 160c
Ideally you have a casserole dish (with a lid) that does both stove top and oven, so you brown the shanks in a casserole dish with olive oil and pepper. Then set shanks aside.
Lower heat, sweat the leeks and add the carrot in the same dish.
Add the tomato paste and tomatoes, sugar, salt, then herbs (which can be left on their stick or removed an chopped), stir the sauce.
Add the shanks back to the pot, make sure they are covered with the sauce. You may add a bit of water or stock.
Put the lid on and put in the oven for a minimun of 3 hours.
Check on it half to hourly, if the sauce is drying out, add a little bit of water or stock.
About 30 mins before serving, add the beans so they cook in the pot, or you can steam them separately.

Serve on a bed of parmesan polenta with a sprinkle of parsley.

* I forgot to add the beans to the one pictured (they were still waiting in the colander after everyone had finished dinner, so you can leave them off completely too if you wish)

when they talk about bumper crops I’m not sure this is what they mean

So this was it, the first veggie garden. Small, but sufficient. Humble, but practical. Solid, with integrity. Solid, with wood. Solid, with metal posts.

I was feeling confident. Enthusiasm overflowing. The spring breeze in my hair. Anticipation, I could almost feel the fecundity.

I filled it with seeds and seedlings and more seeds, by the handful. I was going to grow things – I was going to Create!

It was all becoming a little bit heady. But as the days passed and spring turned to summer, my little garden bed did grow, and continued to grow. My spinach became fundamentalist in the far end quashing the hopes and dreams of the beets, the tomatoes strangled the smaller low-lying populations of chives and parsley, the endive threw out ballistics in the form of sinewy flowers…

It was a battle. A battle to the death. Who would survive? Who would be evicted? Who would be dispossessed? And, increasingly less importantly, what would we be able to eat?

Needless to say, not very much considering the number of seeds I planted.

So lesson one, the thrill of growing plants should be managed against the logistics of their requirements.