Osso Buco

Until last week, I had never tried the classic Milanese dish, osso buco, let alone made it myself. It's something I have been intent on cooking for some time, but the main ingredient, thick slices of veal shin, have eluded me. I have never been interested in making a variation on with a substitute for the veal, such as pork- I wanted to try the real thing. My butcher had osso buco in stock the other week- this is not a regular occurrence, so I took the opportunity to buy what I could.

I mentioned wanting to try the real thing- osso buco is one of those dishes that has a lot of dispute on how to cook it the correct way- namely, whether or not tomatoes should be added to the dish. I am not an experienced enough cook to join in on this debate, so I went with the advice of Anna Del Conte, who is both Milanese and author of some of my favourite cookery books. She is very clear on her opinion that tomatoes should not be added to osso buco. I wouldn't rule out trying it, as I would like to be able to form my own opinion on the great tomato debate, but veal is a bit too expensive for me to buy often enough to experiment.

I served the osso buco with the it's classic pairing, risotto alla Milanese. The recipe I used suggested using some beef marrow into the risotto, which I sadly do not have a ready supply of- I used the listed substitution of pancetta. The big slices of veal I had, did hold a lot of wonderful, creamy marrow, which was a real treat, especially with a sprinkling of sea salt on it- so I didn't feel I was missing out by not using marrow in the risotto too.

The recipe I used is here. I only had 4 slices of osso buco, but I kept the other ingredients in the same quantities. It meant I had a lot of leftover cooking liquid, but it was so delicately delicious that the remaining juices got eaten the next day with just some bread to soak it up.

Cherry Tomato Foccacia

This flatbread makes a lovely summery lunch with some feta or goats cheese, and maybe some salad alongside. Like many breads, it takes a while to make, but the level of actual labour is low. Focaccia recipes aren't a new thing to this blog, so I don't post every variation I made. But I felt this was sufficiently different and delicious to merit a blog post of its own.

Ingredients
For the dough:
500g strong white flour
1 sachets dried yeast
2 tsp fine salt
280ml lukewarm water
50ml extra virgin olive oil


For the topping:
250g cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced
 Leaves from 10 stalks of thyme, chopped
100ml olive oil
Coarse sea salt, to sprinkle

In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly combine 250 grams of the flour, and all the yeast and salt. Quickly whisk together the water and the olive oil, and stir into the dry ingredients so all the flour is mixed in. Add as much extra flour as you need to make a dough that is only slightly sticky. Tip onto a floured surface, and knead for 5-10 minutes, until it is smooth and elastic. Return to the bowl, cover with a tea towel, and leave to rise until it is doubled in size. This should take about 2 hours.

Once the first prove has finished, punch the dough down and give it another quick knead. Line a baking tray with some baking paper and oil. Roll or press the dough into a rough rectangle, about 1 cm thick, and dimple the surface of the dough all over with your fingers. Leave to prove for another half an hour. Meanwhile, half the tomatoes lengthways. In a bowl, combine with the olive oil, garlic and thyme. Leave aside to macerate. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.  After the final prove, spread the oily tomatoes over the surface of the bread, and sprinkle lightly with the sea salt. Place in oven and bake for around half an hour, until golden brown.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

for the sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped finely
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves finely chopped
2 tsp dried oregano
2x800g tins of chopped tomatoes
pinch of chilli powder (optional)
pinch sugar (if needed, see below)

 for the meatballs
500g beef mince
500g pork mince
1 crushed clove of garlic
small bunch of flat leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped finely
3-4 anchovies, finely chopped/minced

1 tbsp olive oil
half a glass of red wine
750g spaghetti or other long pasta
Basil leaves
Freshly grated parmesan.

Start with the sauce. In a heavy bottomed saucepan, gently fry the onion, garlic, celery and carrot until they are translucent and softened. Add the  rosemary and oregano, and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in the tinned tomatoes, and sprinkle in the chilli powder. Turn the heat up to a simmer, and leave to gently bubble until it is thick and pulpy. Stir at frequent intervals so the bottom does not burn. Taste near the end- if the tomatoes turn out to be not so sweet, add a little bit of sugar. Be generous with the pepper grinder, but hold off on adding salt until the very end of cooking time.

While the sauce is cooking, mix together the meat, garlic, parsley and anchovies, along with a good amount of salt and pepper. Form into balls a little smaller that a walnut.

 In a hot frying pan, quickly brown the meatballs in batchs, setting them aside as the are done. When they are all browned, put them in the sauce and stir the in gently, being careful not not break them up. With the heat still under the pan used to brown the meatball, pour in the red wine, let it bubble up and cook off the harsh alcohol smell, then pour this into the sauce as well. Let everything cook together over a low heat while you get on with the pasta. Taste the sauce, and adjust the seasoning if you feel it needs it.

Drain the cooked pasta, and mix with the meatballs. Tear up to basil leaves and mix these in too. Serve with lots of parmesan.


If you make a big batch of sauce and only cook a small amount of pasta, I recommend using some of the meatballs and sauce to make a homespun meatball sub. Get a submarine roll, or french bread, fill with reheated sauce and meatballs, and sprinkle with a mixture of parmesan and mozzarella. Bake in a hot oven for a few minutes until the cheese is melty.

Tomato and Basil Sauce

Tomato and basil sauce for pasta is about as far as you can get from ground breaking but my aim is to build up a comprehensive collection of recipes on my blog which are accessible, rather than a Blumenthal-esque towers-of-soup-recipe blog. I sometimes find myself trying a bit too hard to innovate,. and it's times like these I need something classic to remind myself that simple does not have to mean boring.

A decent tomato sauce is not at all difficult, and very useful. You can use it as the base for other dishes- pizza sauce, the lubrication for meatballs and pasta. It's cheap to make and is pretty non-threatening to children who are fussy eaters (though the basil might be a bit too green).

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
800g tinned tomatoes
Good lump of unsalted butter
pinch sugar (if needed)
Basil leaves, a good handful.

Method
In a heavy bottomed saucepan, fry the onion until softened in the olive oil. Add the garlic and cook for about 1 minute. Once the garlic has release its scent, add the tin of tomatoes. Turn up the heat to medium high, and let it bubble away until thick and pulpy.Stir from time to time, otherwise the bottom will burn. Season with salt and pepper, and some sugar if you think it needs it (I often do). You can add the pepper before this stage, but not the sugar or salt- after reducing it down the flavour will taste too concentrated, so wait until you reach the consistency you like. Stir in a big lump of butter, letting it melt in the residual heat. Just before serving, stir in the basil leaves, torn up roughly with your hands.

Courgette, Goats' Cheese and Thyme Risotto

Slow cooking in olive oil and butter coaxes the flavour out of courgettes, I think it is the best treatment for them. I really recommend cooking them separately and then stirring into the risotto at the end of cooking instead of chucking them in with the onions and garlic. It does involve an extra saucepan, the courgettes will end up watery and flavourless, leaving you wondering why you used them in the first place.
I had a little cream left in the fridge that needed using up, so I added it to the risotto at the end. It's still rich without it though, so whether you use it or not is up to you.

Ingredients
3 medium sized courgettes
Olive oil
Butter
Thyme
2 tsp lemon juice
1 onion, peeled and chopped medium-fine
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
500g risotto rice
small glass dry white wine
1.5 litres chicken or vegetable stock
4 tbsp parmesan, + extra for the table
200g soft goats cheese, crumbled
Butter
2 tbsp cream (optional)

Method
Finely slice the courgettes, and slowly fry in a knob of butter and a tsp of olive oil. Turn from time to time, but mostly let them gently cook by themselves until they're melting. In the last five minutes of cooking add in the chopped thyme. Take off the heat and squeeze over the lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
In a heavy based saucepan, melt another spoonful of butter and fry the onion and garlic in it over a medium low heat until softened. Put the stock in another saucepan and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat up under the onions, and stir in the rice. Cook for about a minute, stirring, so that the grains 'toast' slightly. Pour in the wine (keep stirring), and once it has absorbed into the rice, add the first ladleful of stock. Once that has absorbed, add another ladle of it, and so on. Stir all the time, so it cooks evenly, and to achieve the lovely creamy texture of a good risotto. Once the rice is cooked (soft but not mush) stir in the courgettes, Then take off the heat and add another spoon of butter, the 4 tablespoons of parmesan and the cream, if using. Mix it in, put a lid on the pan, and leave for 2 minutes. This final stage is the mantecura, the thickening of the risotto. Sprinkle over the goats cheese just before serving.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Carbonara is so easy and quick to make, yet it is probably one of the recipes that have suffered the most corruption. Done well it is dreamy, done badly it is stodgy and bland. The worst thing I've seen done to a spaghetti carbonara is it being coated with bechamel sauce in place of mixing the pasta with the raw egg. Bottled carbonara sauce is a horrendous idea too, especially as the 'sauce' required merely involves beating some eggs.
White wine is sometimes listed as an ingredient- it'll taste nice, but I'm not sure could call it carbonara. Sometimes I add a little cream, just to gild the lily. I wouldn't buy cream especially for the dish, but if I have some in the fridge I'll happily add a tablespoon or two to the beaten eggs.
I wouldn't complain if I was served carbonara made with pancetta or lardons and parmesan instead of the original guanciale and pecorino romano- I think these are perfectly acceptable substitutions. If you could never have carbonara because cured pig jowl is never available in your local morrisons, then that would be very sad. Try to avoid rashers of bacon in place of the guanciale or pancetta- the little cubes are far nicer here. 
This recipe is probably right for about 3 or 2 hungry people.

Recipe
250g spaghetti
2 eggs, plus 1 yolk
1-2 tbsp double cream
2 tbsp finely grated pecorino or parmesan
1tsp olive oil
100g diced pancetta or lardons

Method
Put a pan of water on the heat. When it starts to boil, add a large pinch of salt and the spaghetti, and cook for as long as the pack tell you tom or until it's cooked as you like it. Beat together the eggs, cream and parmesan, and season with freshly ground black pepper. Add some salt if you like, just remember that the pancetta and parmesan will also make the dish salty.
To avoid the eggs overcooking when mixed with the pasta, I put the beaten egg mix in the fridge until I want to use it. If you have a serving bowl you can put the egg in there, and mix with the cooked pasta. Doing this as opposed to using the same (hot) saucepan you used for cooking pasta will also lessen the risk of an overcooked, grainy sauce.
Fry the pancetta or lardons in the olive oil until slightly crispy, and set aside. Once the pasta is cooked, mix quickly with egg and bacon, and serve.

Linguine alla Puttanesca

Several hours of journeying later, I'm back from Croatia. Travelling exhausts me, and the food solution is to either eat a rich and comforting meal to lull you into a stupor, or go the other way and have something fiery to jolt you back to normality. Having had a week of food without masses of flavour, I opted for the latter. I hovered around making a curry, but settled on pasta puttanesca as it required a little less thinking and a shorter shopping list.

There are probably endless variations to making this sauce, and I'll throw in my own. Onions aren't often included, I like them, but by all means leave them out. By the same token, I'll sometimes add fennel seeds. I think they work well, but they aren't authentic. Spaghetti is the usual pasta shape for the sauce, I just happened to have linguine to hand.

As with other garlicky pasta sauces, Parmesan wouldn't be served alongside puttanesca in Italy. I do prefer it cheeseless- something I rarely say- but you already have the saltiness from the olives and the anchovies so to add parmesan can be overkill. Bear this in mind when seasoning at the end, you may not want to add salt at all. Adding parmesan also tones down the punchiness of the dish, which I feel somewhat defeats the point of puttanesca, The Whore's Sauce.

Ingredients

½ onion, finely chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

6 anchovy fillets

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 tsp dried oregano

1-2 tsp chilli flakes

fennel seeds (optional)

palmful capers, chopped

palmful black olives, stoned and chopped
300grams pasta

Method
Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta, when it reaches boiling point, add salt and the pasta, cook until al dente. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a saucepan or deep frying pan, then add the onion. Cook over a medium heat until softened. Add the garlic, cook for about 1 minute, then add the anchovies. Cook for another minute, then add the tomatoes, oregano, chilli flakes, and the fennel seeds if using. Grind in some pepper too. Turn up the heat slightly and simmer for about 5 minutes. Introduce the olives and capers to the sauce, and cook for a couple more minutes. Taste, add salt and pepper if it needs it. Add the (now drained) pasta to the pan of sauce, toss until thoroughly and evenly coated. Divide between plates and serve.
Serves 3 for a main, 4 for a starter