Classic Pumpkin Pie

Imagine yourself in a roadside diner with red booths and waitresses called Wilma and Gertie.
This is pure Americana.

Ragù alla Bolognese

This Bolognese is the Original, the Definitive, the Ultimate... It's just really really awesome. Using only the bare essentials and a few wise words from the great Antonio Carluccio, this sauce is little effort & great reward.

Fry beef and pork mince (half and half) in some butter until brown. Add chopped onion and garlic and season generously. Once the onion is translucent, add a glass of white wine (if you don't feel like opening a bottle for just a glass, use white vermouth, which I always keep beside the stove for such occasions). Stir in a few tablespoons of tomato paste and a bottle of sieved tomatoes (feel free to haughtily call this "Passata di Pomodoro", I always do). Bring to a boil and move to the lowest flame you've got. Leave to simmer gently for three hours. No, really.
Stir occasionally and finally add some dried oregano, if you feel like it.

Now for a major revalation: originally Bolognese is supposed to be eaten with fresh tagliatelle, not spaghetti. I know! End of the world, right? But it actually makes sense; this is such a thick, strong, dense sauce that only the broad strands of tagliatelle can really stand up to it. Now, the pasta doesn't necessarily need to be made fresh, I'm a great fan of dried pasta and could not imagine my life without it. But just do me a favour and use tagliatelle. It may sound wrong, but it's oh so very right.

Insert joke about getting caught in the rain [ here ]

Piña Colada Cake

Whisk together 250 gr of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon bicarb and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
In another bowl cream 115 gr of soft butter with 55 gr of light brown sugar. When pale and fluffy, beat in two eggs, one at a time. Add 240 ml cream of coconut (which is different from coconut milk!) and a generous tablespoon of dark rum.
Whisk in the dry ingredients (gradually) and stop whisking as soon as the flour is incorporated. Using a spatula, stir in 90 gr of finely chopped fresh pineapple. Spread batter evenly in a prepared 24 cm spring form and bake for 35 - 40 minutes in a 180 C oven, until a skewer (use a piece of uncooked spaghetti!) inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Let it cool, then using that same piece of spaghetti, prick little holes in the cake and drizzle over some more (a tablespoon or two) pineapple juice, or rum... or both.

Make some icing by whisking together 100 gr of icing sugar with a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of pineapple juice and spread this over the cake. Allow the icing to set, if you can, and consume with inappropriate relish. This really is something else.

For a grey and dreary day...

Banana bread

Making something wonderful is fulfilling enough, but to make something wonderful with produce you’d otherwise throw away gives me a feeling of immeasurable pleasure and smugness. Naturally I never throw away apples past their prime; I’ve been making applesauce since before time began. But now I’ve also found a way to deal with brown bananas (I only eat bananas that are still green around the edges). This banana bread comes courtesy of The Delicious Miss Dahl (initially I seriously underestimated her value in the baking department), and it is glorious. I first made it as a way to use up the brown bananas I had lying around and ever since I keep buying too many bananas, just to make sure I’ve always got some left over at the end of the week.
My addendum: try using different sugars. Dark brown sugar will give you slightly more depth of flavour while light brown will give a treacly sweetness and make the cake more moist and dense.

No matter how you make this cake, it’s easy. However using a food processor really makes it a doddle.

Put 70 grams of butter, an egg, 200 grams of brown sugar, 4 bananas (brown on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside) and a tablespoon of vanilla extract in the bowl and blitz. Add a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt and blitz again. When wet and smooth, pour into a bowl and whisk in 170 grams of flour.
Pour this mixture into a greased tin and bake for an hour at 160 degrees (fan assisted oven).

Eat and prepare to repeat this process. A lot.

disembowelment

The Christmas Pudding That Was

Dense, fruity, boozy, fabulous.
And it only took four months to make.

Dansk

Tarragon & Leek Risotto

I'm always surprised by leeks. They don't look like much, but they really deliver. Chop a large leek into rings and fry over a low flame in some butter and oil. You don't want it to colour, just to soften. The leek will produce a wonderful, aromatic fug, sweet and herbal. Stir in the Arborio rice (rinse the rice first, until the water runs clear) until all is sleek and shiny with butter and add a glass of good white wine, stirring, stirring…

Pull the leaves off the stems of a fat bunch of fresh tarragon and add the first fragrant, aniseedy handful now, along with about a teaspoon of dried tarragon. Once the wine has been absorbed, start adding ladlefuls of chicken stock. When absorbed, add more, keep stirring. Make sure to enjoy this mindless, repetitive activity. It’s part of what makes risotto so comforting!
Add some more tarragon after every couple of ladlefuls of stock. It should take about twenty minutes for the rice to cook. Add a handful of freezer greens after about fifteen minutes. I always use peas and sometimes green beans too, but whatever you’ve got is fine, you’re mostly looking for some different textures. Season with some white pepper (it should have enough salt already because of the stock) and add a final scattering of fresh tarragon. If you want to add cheese, I’d go with a grating of pecorino, or make some pecorino crisps.

Pasta 101

Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the desire to rid the world of a few misconceptions. This is a grand, ambitious plan, I know, so to make it a bit more manageable I'll just stick to misconceptions about cooking pasta. For now.

First of all, should you really add salt to the water to you cook your pasta in?
YES!
There is a saying so wonderful that to read it once is to remember it forever and it is this: You should always cook your pasta in water as salty as the Mediterranean.
Now, salt will not influence the actual cooking, it will not (in any significant way) alter the boiling point. Nor will it not stop the pasta from sticking or any such nonsense. It will simply season the product. And you should always season, whatever you're cooking. Pasta itself isn't much of anything and unsalted pasta just tastes of a flabby nothing.
Adding salt after cooking doesn't do anyone any favours either; you'll just have a flabby nothing with bits of salt clinging to it. Adding the salt to the water means it will infuse the pasta and this will give it body and bite (in terms of flavour).
So add it, and quite a bit of it too, seeing how most will go down the drain. Just remember when you were a kid, swimming off the coast of Italy or Spain and accidentally swallowing a mouthful of water. That's the level of salt we're talking about.

And about adding oil or butter to the water you’re cooking pasta in?
DON’T!
It’s another bizarre misconception that oil will stop the water from boiling over. Why would this be the case? The mind boggles.
If your water is boiling over, your pan is too small or you should turn the heat down a bit. You don’t need a raging inferno to maintain a steady boil; a moderate flame will do just fine.
Another so-called reason for adding oil is (again) that it will stop the pasta from sticking. Pasta needs plenty of water to move around in. If it doesn’t have enough water, then it’ll stick. So use a big pan with lots of boiling water and stir the moment you tip the pasta in and a minute after, it’ll be fine.
Adding oil will make the pasta slippery, that’s true, but that just means any sauce you’re planning to add later will slide right off as well.

One last thing:
Testing whether spaghetti is cooked by flinging a strand at the wall does sort of work: when it’s cooked, it will stick. It’s also great fun. Just biting into a strand does give you slightly better results however. Sorry about that.