food – diasyrmus

risotto milanese

i had the best risotto milanese in Milan, perhaps surprisingly enough. the worst was in a carluccio’s in chiswick and was the closest thing to vomit i’ve ever been served anywhere.

this was excellent. a good stock, finely chopped guanciale (rather than bone marrow but nm), and cooked to exactly the texture i like – rice with a slightly hard kernel, suspended neither firmly nor loosely in the butter, saffron, parmesan and starch of the stock in which it’s been cooked. best thing i’ve cooked so far this year (not so far in itself particularly resplendent with glories tbh)

new year, old favorite

Courgette sauce with basil and beaten egg yolk, from Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

An old favourite this. The flavour of the courgette is right at the front, as although it tastes creamy, it hasn’t got any cream in it.

The trick is to ensure the flour and milk binding doesn’t split in the butter, which means it really is a matter of turning the heat right down under the butter and pouring it in bit by bit and stirring constantly.

Doesn’t look much…

..but leftover stufatino and homemade tagliatelle with anchovy butter, plus the last of the barolo i cooked the stew with… it’s a hell of a combo

white plate with a heap of tagliatelle on one side and a deep brown almost black beef stew on the other — noodles in anchovy butter and stufatino alla romana

col tocco d’arrosto

I’ve written about pasta col tocco d’arrosto before. ‘With a touch of the roast’: pasta cooked and thrown in to the roasting pan with a little of its water, swirled around on the gas with some parmesan, until the ‘sauce’ is somewhat but not entirely reduced and sticking to the pasta, and the roasting pan is almost entirely clean.

May Day Food Post

I’m pleased to say I’ve been doing more cooking again recently. Maybe it’s the bank holidays, maybe it’s the lengthening evenings.

First up, hake and salsa verde from Claudia Roden’s The Food of Spain. It’s supposed to be with asparagus, but it hadn’t quite made its appearance in my grocers by this point, so I did it with peas and the water the peas in which the peas had been cooked. By moving the hake slowly around in the pan, the hake releases gelatin, which further thickens and binds the salsa verde. Will be doing this with asparagus this week I think. It’s very simple and fresh tasting.

fish, in a green sauce with peas and new potatoes, on a white plate, on a walnet table, books and magazines in the background

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easter cooking

Some easter cooking. Fish pie for a friend last Wednesday. Very difficult to get good fish pie out in restaurants so it’s a good one to do yerself, and this was exceptional A+ no further questions. No ard boiled hegg because they don’t like it.

fish pie and spinach on a white plate

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haven’t done a food post in a while

Mainly because I haven’t been cooking that much, or cooking particularly interesting things when I do. Still, the extensive audience for this blog expects more and so here is an update.

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