pasta – … and roses too.

Tag: pasta

Magic Lasagne (vegetarian)

Gah, life’s a bit shit now, isn’t it.

I guess I’m not the only one looking in my kitchen cupboard at the carb section for comfort.

So anyway. This recipe was devised a year or so ago, when things were Totally Fine but we didn’t appreciate it because we’re shitty human beings. And I didn’t get around to posting it, because I was too busy going out for cocktails and to galleries and parties and OMG I’m a terrible person and I want my old life back.

I’ve called it Magic Lasagne because it has a secret surprising ingredient that blew my mind when I discovered it.

It’s inspired by a vegetable lasagne that used to be served at a small Italian cafe in Brixton that doesn’t exist any more. It was called Bellantoni’s. The guys were lovely and the food was sublime. The first time I ordered this, I poked it with a fork, saw it was full of the secret ingredient, felt puzzled, then tasted it and WOW. Cherubs appeared, sang sweet songs about heaven itself, I cried with joy, and then put duct tape over my mouth so I couldn’t order a second portion for pudding.

(I should have ordered a second portion for pudding.)

So when I looked at the back of my fridge a year or so ago, and saw some sad-looking vegetables, I thought, hey, whatevs, I’m a Londoner, I can do anything I want, I’ll give this a go.

And it worked.

And it won my heart.

And now maybe it might win yours too, in this weird sad time where we’re all pretending that national PE at 9am and national choir at 5:30pm is a totally normal thing, the queen’s addressing the nation even though it’s not Christmas and people like me have taken up yoga.

FFS.

I love this because it uses up stuff I always need to use up. It’s way healthier than you’d think, because it tastes so comfort food, and you get a carb hit and there’s an ooh when you take it out of the oven, because lasagne, and everyone in your home needs that right now.

And now for the secret.

Not the prettiest, but a stalwart for your kitchen

Recipe: Quite frankly the world’s best tomato sauce

April 2, 2018 / Linnie Vallance / 1 Comment

There comes a time in every cook’s life, no matter how competent she thinks she is, when the holes in one’s repertoire start to show.

So it was with me and tomato sauce.

For many years, I’d got by with frying onions, adding garlic, tomatoes and herbs, and cooking it for a bit.

But none of these attempts resulted in the thick, savoury, hyper-tomato flavour that one gets from a simple plate of spaghetti al pomodoro in any half-decent Italian family joint. To be honest, it was all a bit … studenty.

So a couple of years ago, I embarked on a mission to fix this. But it proved much more difficult, with far more experimentation, than expected.

I tried Diane Seed’s, the ones from her otherwise completely ace book, “The top 100 pasta sauces”. (Surprisingly uninspiring.)
I tried Delia’s. (Too fussy.)
I tried Marcella Hazan’s, via Smitten Kitchen. (Delicious, but it’s got so much butter in it that there’s no way it can claim to be an everyday staple.)
I tried both the recipes from the Silver Spoon. (They were … fine?)
I tried Felicity Cloake’s allegedly perfect amalgamation of all the greats’ recipes. (It was not.)
I even tried the Mothership’s, but for some reason, mine never turned out reliably like hers.

Thus, a dead end had been reached.

And so it was that I found myself in Mark and Niki’s kitchen, telling my sorry tale over a cup of chamomile tea.

Recipe: Asparagus and lovage pesto pasta

April 23, 2017 / Linnie Vallance / 0 Comments

I’m delighted to introduce Ted’s first appearance in the blog! He went to the farmers market today and found the first asparagus of the year – cause for celebration indeed. He teamed it with the most lovely homemade lovage pesto – his own delicious invention – and made us the most gloriously green spring lunch. I begged him to write up the recipe and he did. Here you go.

What to do with lovage, the world and Joe want to know. It’s a vigorous herb which produces lots of big green fronds that look suspiciously like flat-leaf parsley. Unlike parsley, however, lovage is not mildly-flavoured. Its taste is not unpleasant – like a very strong celery leaf – but I’ve always struggled to know what to do with it as it always seemed like it would overpower most other flavours. So I’ve been left with a herb that grows unchecked and unharvested until it kicks out its flower spike in mid-summer and finally dies back.

Then, while gardening one weekend and looking again at the rapidly expanding lovage, I had a brainwave – what about making all those leaves into pesto? It turns out that other people have had the same idea and there are several recipes already on the web. See here and here.

The most comforting roasted red pepper and butternut squash pasta bake

April 12, 2017 / Linnie Vallance / 1 Comment

While it does sound a bit ridiculous to keep puréed, roasted butternut squash stashed in the freezer, it does come in handy at times. Like when your husband stumbles in, as he did last night, exhausted from a really tough day at work and needs some comfort food, stat, but you’d planned some healthy, crunchy, veggie wraps.

... and roses too.

The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.

Tag: pasta

Magic Lasagne (vegetarian)

Recipe: Quite frankly the world’s best tomato sauce

Recipe: Asparagus and lovage pesto pasta

The most comforting roasted red pepper and butternut squash pasta bake

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