I’ve started a food blog, where I review the restaurants I visit in Rome. I dunno, it might be useful if you’re ever in the neighbourhood.

Homesick & Hungry

Browsing around the cookery section in Chapters, I came across a book called “Potatoes: Mash and More.” Atkins be damned, I love potatoes and I’m always searching to make the perfect mash. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t reveal any previously-unknown tips, so my mash remains at “average”, but it does have a few other good ideas which suit my tasty-but-easy demeanor.

So last night, I decided to try out their “Potato Bravas”, with a few changes.

Ingredients:

(Serves 2)

• 10 small new potatoes
• 1 Chorizo, chopped into thin slices
• 1 medium onion chopped fine
• 4 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoon “Cajun” seasoning
• Salt

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees.
2. Chop the potatoes into 1cm slices and lay them in a baking tray, one row deep. Drizzle all over with olive oil and salt, and put it into the oven for 30 minutes, turning occasionally.
3. Make the sauce: put the olive oil, water, red wine vinegar, chili powder and cajun seasoning into a bowl and mix well. Add some salt to season.
4. In a pan, fry the onions until they’re opaque but not brown, then add the chorizo. Turn the heat down to a low simmer.
5. Pour the sauce into the pan and add the potatoes. Keep turning until the potatoes are completely covered and the sauce has reduced down.
6. Pour into bowls and serve with sour cream and salsa.

Now I have one less reason to go to the Market Bar.

There is something intrinsically fun about playing with your food. Children understand this. And we tell them not to do it because.. well.. we were taught not to do it and, goddammit, if we can’t do it, we won’t let anyone else do it either. So there.

This is why I love meal-making with mince. Making mince mushy. Alliteration aside, when I’m preparing a meal out of paste that was once recognisable as meat, I’m instantly transported back to my youth: I’m 5 years old again, creating a mess with mala. Except my meat creations taste marginally better than my mala ones.

I’ve made a couple of batches of meatballs now, but the ones I made during the week were the first ones where the ingredients felt right. And best of all, it was thrown together in less than a half an hour when I got home late and wasn’t really in the mood for anything too complicated.

• 450g pork mince
• kielbasa sausage (or any smoked/spicy meat)
• clove garlic
• wholegrain mustard
• half an onion
• 1 teaspoon tabasco sauce
• lime leaves
• salt & pepper

Chop the onion really, really, really fine. It doesn’t have to be evenly chopped, a few larger bits here and there add to the texture. But it still needs to be thin.

Similarly, chop the sausage into really, really, really small cubes. As small as you can. A good handful should do you.

Crush the garlic with the side of your knife and then chop it fine.

Throw the onion, sausage and garlic into a bowl with the pork mince along with two teaspons of the wholegrain mustard and about a teaspoon of the tabasco sauce.

Roll the lime leaves in your fingers to crush it, then chop it to make sure it’s extra-fine and add it to the bowl. Season the mix generously.

Now the fun part – mush the whole thing around until you get a consistent paste. All the ingredients should be roughly spread throughout the entire thing. Roll the whole thing up into little balls. There’s no rule as to the size of these, but I’ve found that they should fit in the palm of my hand, not on the palm of my hand. Does this make sense? Bear in mind, the size of the balls will affect the cooking time.

Pour a good amount of oil (olive oil won’t splash, vegetable oil will) into a decent non-stick pan and get it good and hot. When it’s ready, start adding the meatballs. You’ll never have a completely round ball, so I’ve found it’s best to cook these on one side, until they’re on the point of burning, then flip them onto another side. When they’re a dark brown on most sides, you can start turning them more regularly, to cook the inside.

Serve in some noodles with some chicken stock (Knorr do my favourite store-bought chicken stock right now).

A couple of weeks ago, on the recommendation of a couple of food blogs (101 cookbooks being the big one), I picked up a copy of Nigel Slater’s ‘Appetite’.

I think I’m in love.

I already own a few cookbooks. Standard fare like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. Then things like “1000 Quick and Easy Recipes”. And “Good Mood Food”. And they have all, without exception, bored me rigid.

You see, I’m not much for following instructions. I was brought up by people who were quite happy to boil/roast the shit out of every meal. This taught me that not everyone’s palette was the same. And from this, it taught me that slavishly following recipes is no way to create a meal. Especially when you’re just cooking for yourself – how do I know my tastes are going to be the same as Jamie’s? (For the record, they’re not. His recipe for Chicken Maryland made me quite ill).

In comes Nigel Slater.

His book explains everything I knew instictively about cooking but had never heard from someone who actually knew how to cook: recipes are not gospel and should be used only as a guide. He reminds us that recipes were originally used by chefs to keep track of where the housekeeping money was spent. And as he so correctly points out, being told to “put it in the oven for 35 minutes” will not give the same result for everyone, since everyone’s setup is different, everyone’s meal is different. Everyone’s palette is different.

Another thing I love about Nigel Slater’s book is the straightforward way he presents his food. There is no trace of snobbery in his writing. In fact, he writes as elegantly about the delights of a Big Mac as he does of any of his other recipes. Lines like “there is nothing wrong with using a stock cube, not all stock has to be home-made” have led my girlfriend to refer to the book as “vidication” for all the frilly ‘domestic goddess’ nonsense being thrown about by other food writers that make us normal people who can’t spend all day reducing stock feel slightly boorish for turning to Knorr for some help.

Also unusual about Nigel Slater’s book is the way the writing lends itself to casual reading. Unlike the other cookbooks in my collection which have a brief introduction and go straight to the recipies, Slater’s book has a conversational tone, and almost half the book is given over to best practices – how to best cook a steak, how to best store food, and how to best enjoy your food. This leads to ‘Appetite’ being the kind of book you can pick up and read at any time, not just when you’re looking for ideas for something to cook.

I also can’t argue with anyone who extols the beauty of a simple sausage and mash done well.

And with that, my first attempt at a homemade ragu.

A Simple Ragu*

*”Simple” in this case meaning “made with things we had lying around in our kitchen”.

If you’re like me, you probably buy a load of ingredients with good intentions and never get around to using them before they go off. The three main culprits for me are tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese. So last night, I decided to do something about this. I decided to make my own ragu.

For this, you will need

• Plenty of tomatoes (12 or so small ones)
• A large onion (or a couple of small ones)
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Garlic
• Basil
• Dijon Mustard
• Dried Chillis

Get a few cloves of garlic (I’m fond of garlic and used 3 large cloves, which didn’t overpower the flavour of the rest of the ingredients), and slice them very thin. As thin as you can.

Then cut the onion, as thin as you can. If you’re no good at cutting onions, or want to improve your onion-cutting skills, you could do a whole lot worse than checking out Peter Hertzmann’s article on “How to cut…”.

Finally, cut the tomatoes into small chunks about the size of a jellybean. Keep every part of the tomato, don’t try getting all fancy and de-seeding it. We’ll need everything.

Warm a good, solid non-stick pan and in it, melt some butter with a little olive oil to keep the butter from burning. When it starts to warm up, throw in the garlic and fry until it starts to brown. Then add the tomatoes and onions.

You’ll need to keep stirring the tomatoes until they start to get really mushy. This should take about 20 minutes. Then season well with plenty of salt and black pepper.

Right now, you have a very basic ragu. From here, it’s up to your individual taste. Personally, I was in the mood for something with a little kick, so I put in a bit of balsamic vinegar, basil and a heap of dijon mustard. I also put in a good helping of red wine. To spice it up, I crushed some dried chillies and put them in too. Once you’ve added your last incredients, you should leave it for another 10 minutes or so before it gets really sticky.

This is perfect for putting over your favourite pasta. If you want to mix in some mince, you should put your ragu through a blender first, and cook it with the meat for about 20 minutes until the meat soaks up all of the flavour.

If you do decide to try this, comment and let me know how you got on. Although don’t worry, I’m under no illusions as to how many people are going to try cooking something they found on a random website.