cahiers de doléances
A week where I hit a wall in terms of stress and fatigue, so that Saturday was a complete write off, and my mental acuity is so poor I’m wondering whether it warrants medical assessment. Not wanting to return to the week – another heavy duty one – with nothing to show for my weekend, I was determined to cook myself something nice. A first time hollandaise with asparagus for me, which worked out very well I think, and then bream from the market, with lentils that I made a couple of days before.
living no sort of quality of intellectual life at the moment but food doesn’t care about that. as more than one person has said boiled beef and carrots is about the closest you get to something pot-au-feu in food from this archipelago. as long as you take care over the broth and skim during its cooking.
this isn’t quite as clear as i’d like but the flavour is a+. the brisket, the sweetness of the carrots and the dijon with it, the most simple basic elements tied together by the broth.
it is of course asparagus season and i will *definitely* do a hollandaise. next time. for the moment butter and lemon and salt
cannelloni was very successful! and the asparagus is making an appearance in the market. green barley risotto with peas and asparagus was the consequence. no other photos of an actual life lived ofc.
oh and an extremely successful pommes boulangères – the best thing I’ve eaten this year I think?
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)
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.
..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
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.
Continue reading “col tocco d’arrosto”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.
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.
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.