Asparagus carbonara

Asparagus has come so early this year - a good month before the beginning of the official English asparagus season - that there's a danger you may be fed up with it already and be casting around for creative things to do with it. This is a good way to use up the thin asparagus called sprue or those misshapen spears you sometimes find at farm gates which don't meet supermarkets' exacting standards.

Asparagus carbonara
Serves 2

A bunch of asparagus
1 tbsp olive oil
A slice of butter
1/2 a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and sliced
1 tbsp fresh tarragon or 1 tsp dried tarragon (optional but good)
200g tagliatelle, fettucine or spaghetti
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
4 tbsp grated parmesan or Grana Padano + extra for serving
A spoonful or two of double or whipping cream (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut the bottom quarter to a third off the asparagus spears. Cut off the tips and set aside then roughly chop the rest of the stem.

Heat a frying pan, add the oil then when that’s hot add the butter. Tip in the chopped asparagus and sliced onions, add the tarragon and stir for 2-3 minutes. Add the tips to the pan and fry a few minutes more until tender then take off the heat.

Meanwhile bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, add salt and cook the tagliatelle for the time recommended on the pack. Spoon off about 3 tbsp of the cooking water into the asparagus then drain the pasta and return to the pan.

Tip in the beaten eggs, parmesan and cream if using and mix well. The heat of the pasta will cook the egg but shouldn’t scramble it. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Quickly reheat the asparagus and toss with the pasta. Serve in warm bowls with extra parmesan.

How to cook shortribs - with brilliant leftovers

Just before winter finally disappears (although looks like I may already have missed the boat) here's a wonderfully warming dish of braised beef shortribs I made last weekend when I was having a bit of freezer clearout. To be honest I'd forgotten about them - as you do. They were a bargain I'd picked up in one of our local Bristol butchers Ruby & White for under £10, I seem to remember. Impressive as there was enough for two generous meals.

First I followed the recipe below from The Frugal Cook which gave us two socking great ribs to feast on on Sunday night. I left them in the AGA overnight, cooled and skimmed them the following morning then reheated them for dinner along with some roast carrots.

You don't have to use a whole bottle of wine for the dish (I'm lucky enough to have a ridiculous number of open bottles due to the day job) - if you replace half with stock it will still be delicious - but more gravy-like.

Braised beef short-ribs
Short-rib is a classic American and French cut which used to be quite hard to find but which is increasingly widely available. They’re thick chunky wedges of beef on the bone and need long slow cooking.

Serves 4-6
2 tbsp oil
1.2kg beef short ribs
2 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 level tbsp tomato purée
1 rounded tbsp plain flour
600-700ml full-bodied red wine or wine and stock combined + an extra half glassful
2 sprigs of thyme
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large ovenproof pan or casserole and brown the ribs on all sides. Set aside. Turn the heat down and fry the chopped onions and carrots in the oil until beginning to soften (about 7-8 minutes). Stir in the garlic and tomato puree and cook for a minute over a low heat then stir in the flour. Gradually add 500ml red wine then heat, stirring, until the sauce has thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Return the ribs to the pan, adding enough extra wine, stock or water to ensure they’re covered with sauce and bring to the boil. Turn the heat right down and simmer on the lowest possible heat or transfer the casserole to a low oven (140°C/275°F/Gas 1) for 3 1/2 to 4 hours until the meat is falling off the bone. Check the casserole every hour or so to make sure it isn’t cooking too fast. The surface should barely tremble. Remove from the heat and cool then refrigerate overnight. Skim the fat off the surface of the casserole then return the ribs to the liquid in the casserole. Add another half glassful of red wine and reheat slowly.

The following night I made the dish I'd actually been gagging to make - a simplified version of the beef shin macaroni (aka macaronnade) in the Hawksmoor at Home cookbook in which I had a hand. You simply shred the remaining meat and fold it and the sauce - of which you need a fair bit - into some freshly cooked short or 'elbow' macaroni. The kind you use for macaroni cheese. I bought mine loose in a shop called Scoopaway in Gloucester Road.

Then you layer it up in an ovenproof dish with a good sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan between each layer and bake it at about 190°C for half an hour or so. About 60-75g of parmesan in total - you need to be quite generous with it. I won't say it's the world's most beautiful dish (not helped by this murky low-lit photo) but it is insanely good. Like the best spag bol you've ever tasted. Feeds 4.

Storecupboard spaghetti with garlicky prawns

One of the few advantages of being under the weather is that you don't want to go to the shops and make do with whatever you have in the fridge, freezer and cupboard. Hence last night's spaghetti which was also designed to blast through a cold.

It's not the most beautiful creation, I admit - if I was making it again I'd definitely add something green - most probably some chopped coriander or snipped chives but it's dead tasty. A slightly ritzed up version of the thrifty Italian classic spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino

Serves 2-3*

2-3 large cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 fresh chilli, de-seeded and finely sliced (or 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes)
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 a small glass of white wine (optional)
A few drops of fish sauce (recommended - a bottle lasts for ages)
180-200g frozen prawns (the cheap North Sea ones not pricey king prawns)
A good chunk of fresh ginger, peeled
200-250g spaghetti depending how hungry you are
Salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon if you think it needs it
A couple of tablespoons chopped coriander or fresh chives (optional but looks good)

Heat a frying pan, add the oil and tip in the sliced garlic and chilli. Cook over a very low heat until the garlic begins to change colour. Add the wine if using, reduce by half then add the fish sauce and prawns. Stir and cook over a low heat until the prawns are completely thawed and hot through (about 4-5 minutes) then take off the heat.

Meanwhile pour a kettleful of water into a large pan bring to the boil, add salt and cook the spaghetti for the time recommended on the pack. Drain, saving a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water. Put the prawns back on the heat, grate in the ginger and heat through with the reserved pasta water. Season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice if you think it needs it. Stir in the coriander if using then tip in the cooked spaghetti and toss together. Serve in warm bowls.

If you wanted to do a veggie version you could replace the prawns with broccoli which I'd cut into small florets and stir-fry in the garlicky/chilli-laced oil.

* We managed to get 2 reasonably-sized portions out of it plus 1 to warm up for today's lunch. Which is why it's in a frying pan.

What's your favourite food when you've got a cold?

Another riff on pasta, tomatoes and pesto

Just to show that the current leftovers jag is still in full swing today I managed to rustle up another pasta dish with the remains of Friday's feast and a few other odds and ends from the salad drawer.

In effect it was a double pasta sauce. I fried a sliced onion and red pepper for about 7-8 minutes until they were beginning to brown then stirred in a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, a tablespoon of tomato paste and a chopped tomato. I left it bubbling away while I cooked about 200g of Mafalda corta pasta with a handful of green beans, adding a few sugar snap peas towards the end of the cooking time.

I spooned off a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water into the tomato mixture (a good trick - thickens the sauce), drained the pasta and vegetables then returned them to the pan and stirred in a tablespoon of olive oil and a good dollop of the leftover pesto from last week. I chucked a few leftover basil leaves into the tomato sauce then served up the pasta and beans with the tomato sauce on top. Could have added more parmesan but simply ground over some seasalt and black pepper. A cheap, simple lunch for two that looked a great deal sexier than its unpromising ingredients . . .

Spaghetti with pesto and roast tomatoes

I'm on a bit of pesto kick at the moment. The local greengrocer is full of fat bunches of basil and there's no other way to use one up before it goes off even if you add basil to everything. Not that making pesto is a hardship. It's so bright and flavourful and vivid in flavour - light years away from the drab, almost khaki-coloured paste you get in jars.

Since I posted the recipe on my student site beyondbakedbeans.com we've been having it slathered over everything which is why there wasn't quite enough to make the sauce I devised for our pasta lunch today (Napolina spaghetti being on special offer in Somerfield at the moment at 2 packs for £1.50). And why it looks slightly duller than it should. (I had to add a dollop of Sacla green pesto to stretch it)

Anyway it's a nice recipe potentially for you other pesto addicts out there . . .

Serves 2
225g spaghetti or linguini
2 tbsp olive oil
150g cherry tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano (optional)
2 good dollops homemade green pesto (find the recipe here)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A little shaved or grated parmesan

Put a large pan of water on to boil, add salt and cook the spaghetti or linguini following the instructions on the pack. While the pasta is cooking heat the oil in a frying pan and add the tomatoes. Cook over a medium heat, shaking the pan occasionally until the tomatoes are soft and beginning to char. Chuck in the oregano if you have some. Drain the pasta reserving a little of the cooking water then return to the pan. Spoon in the oil you used for cooking the tomatoes then add the pesto and a couple of spoonfuls of cooking water and toss well together. Tip the pasta into warm bowls, top with the roasted tomatoes and shave or grate over a little parmesan.

What am I going to do with the rest of the Sacla pesto that's now sitting accusingly in the fridge? Mix it with breadcrumbs and make a topping for fish. Add it to sandwiches. Stir it into a soup. Possibly zip it up with some more fresh basil - although I'd rather use any new basil for a fresh batch of homemade pesto. Any other ideas?

The pleasures of pasta

After four days of quite ridiculous overeating in Canada (involving at least two multi-course meals every day) it was good to be home again. Although it’s exciting, flashy restaurant food palls after a while so it was lovely to eat a dish as straightforward as penne with a simple tomato sauce and a green salad tonight.

I don’t know why we don’t value such dishes more. The Italians are certainly happy enough with them but we (and I include myself in this generalisation) too often seem to feel the need to fiddle about with recipes that are best left alone. And the more ingredients you add, of course, the more a dish costs.

Staggering off to bed shortly. Even though my body clock tells me it's only 4.40 pm I've been up by Canadian time since 2 am this morning, having slept a bare 3 hours on the plane. There's a price to be paid for all that fun . . .

Ahdaf Soueif's koshari

It's been a while since I tried a new recipe - as opposed to inventing my own - but when I saw Ahdaf Soueif's recipe for koshari in the G2 recipe swap in the Guardian the other day I was immediately intrigued. I'd recently got some feedback from the visitors to my student website beyondbakedbeans.com that they wanted some more lentil recipes and thought it would fit the bill perfectly.

In fact I changed it quite a bit. I didn't have any vermicelli and thought it would be hard for students to find so I left it out. I used ordinary long grain rice instead of Egyptian rice (brown rice would be good I think too). I used canned tomatoes instead of fresh ones and slightly more of them than the recipe recommended and left out the tomato concentrate. I mixed the lime and garlic 'takhdi'ab' sauce with the tomato sauce as I thought it was more appealing that way. And I added fresh coriander both for the taste and the final appearance.

When I was writing it up for the website I also changed the running order of the instructions to make it easier to follow and ensure that everything ended up hot at the same time. If - or, rather when I make it again, as I loved it, I'll reduce the amount of lime a little to the amount I've suggested in my version of the recipe and maybe also add some toasted pinenuts. You could also serve it with a bowl of yoghurt (soy, if you wanted to keep it vegan) or some sautéed or steamed cauliflower or broccoli.

Harking back to the conversation we had a few weeks ago about whether to follow recipes or not this is very much how I would tackle a recipe these days. Not that I would claim in any way it's an improvement on the original but it's how I like it.

Do try it and put your own spin on it. It really ticks all the boxes. It's unusual, tasty, frugal (a great way of using up odds and ends of pasta packets), nutritious and a great communal dish to cook for vegetarian and vegan friends. What's not to like?

Spaghetti with bacon and cockles

Yesterday I went down to St Nicholas market to be interviewed about ‘Frugal’ by the Bristol Evening Post, an opportunity to do a bit of browsing at my favourite new food shop and café Taste@St Nicks. They were selling Penclawdd cockles from the Gower peninsula, a delicacy you don’t often come across. I remember having them deep-fried when we were there earlier this year and they were fantastic. And at £1.80 a 100g (all you need for two) they’re a thrifty buy.

This time I thought I’d use them in a simple spaghetti sauce, a bit like a Welsh spaghetti alla vongole with bacon. And Thai fish sauce which sounds weird but just accentuates the fishiness of anything you add it to. Here’s how to do it:

Serves 2
2 tbsp olive oil + extra for drizzling
3 rashers of streaky bacon, rinded and finely chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 small clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 a small glass of dry white wine or water (about 75ml)
1/2 tsp of Thai fish sauce (slightly more if you use water)
100g cockles (if you can’t get fresh ones you could use a jar, though drain and rinse them before you add them to the sauce)
200g spaghetti
A small handful of parsley, finely chopped
Ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a moderate heat and add the bacon. Cook for a minute until the fat starts to run then add the onion, stir, turn the heat down and cook for about 10 minutes until the onion is soft and beginning to brown. Stir in the crushed garlic, cook for a minute then turn the heat up a bit and add the white wine and fish sauce. Bubble up for a minute then take the pan off the heat, tip in the cockles and set aside. Cook the spaghetti in boiling water for the time recommended on the pack. Spoon off 2-3 tbsp of the cooking water into the bacon and cockles then drain the spaghetti. Return to the pan, heat through the sauce, tip it over the spaghetti along with most of the parsley and toss together. Divide the spaghetti between two warm shallow bowls, drizzle over a little olive oil, add a few grinds of pepper and sprinkle with a little more parsley.

A no-food-shopping weekend

I've often wondered how long we could last for food without going to the shops. Of course there are things you'd run out of pretty quickly like fresh milk, fruit and vegetables but if you had a reasonably well-stocked storecupoard and freezer I reckon you could easily survive a week.

Anyway I managed it for a couple of days over the weekend. My husband was away, and I was working on the book so I thought I'd see how I got on. (I didn't plan it ahead so I didn't stock up beforehand, honest!)

Here's what I ate:

Friday
Late back from London so I skipped supper and had a banana. Easy.

Saturday

Breakfast
A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and stewed plums with Greek yoghurt and granola.

Mid morning
A leftover croissant, split and toasted

Lunch
A bit of a chilli-fest. Scrambled eggs with chillies, spring onions and coriander and a warm tortilla, sweet chilli sauce

Dinner
Leftover chicken stew

Sunday breakfast
Same as Saturday's

Lunch
Feta cheese and red pepper tapenade quesadillas. with a chunk of cucumber.

Supper
Linguine with Stilton and onion, a pear

I'm particularly pleased with the linguine and Stilton invention which was made from a (still in date) piece of Stilton I found at the back of the fridge. Funny though how it doesn't sound as glamourous as Gorgonzola. But it's cheaper and just as good. Here's the recipe:

Linguine with Stilton and onion

Serves 1

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
100g linguine or spaghetti
40g Stilton or other blue cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp double or whipping cream, crème fraiche or Greek yoghurt
2 heaped tbsp finely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Grated Grana Padano or Parmesan to serve (optional but nice)

Heat a frying pan, add the oil or butter then once it’s melted tip in the onion, stir and leave over a low heat to fry. Pour a kettle of boiling water into a large saucepan, bring back to the boil, add salt, then add the pasta, stir and cook for the time recommended on the pack. Before you drain the linguine set aside half a cup of the boiling water. Add 3 tbsp of water to the onion and tip in the crumbled cheese. Leave over a low heat to melt then stir in the cream or yoghurt (I used yoghurt which was fine) Drain the pasta and add to the pan along with the parsley and toss well together, adding a splash more water if you need it. Season generously with black pepper. Spoon into a warm bowl and sprinkle over some grated Grana Padano or Parmesan, if you have some. Some dark leafy green salad would be a good accompaniment.

Delia's got a point

Much coverage in the papers over the last few days on Delia's new book 'How to Cheat at Cooking' a collection of recipes based on time-saving products.

Now you might think that would make the recipes costlier than cooking them from scratch but that isn't inevitably so as I explain on my website www.beyondbakedbeans.com today.

Last night was a case in point. Rooting around in the cupboards (it was a No Food Shopping Day) I found a jar of puttanesca sauce - not difficult to make, admittedly, but costly if you don't have olives, capers and anchovies already to hand.

The trouble with ready made products like this is that they tend to be bland so I fried off the last of the spring onions I bought a couple of days ago, added two crushed cloves of garlic and scooped in the sauce, finally adding a big handful of chopped parsley (one of my must-have fridge ingredients). Tossed together with half a pack of spaghetti it made a really tasty - and frugal - meal for two.