Tomato and Onion Salad in Red Pesto Sauce

The main component of this dish is quartered piccolo tomatoes, a finely diced small onion, black pepper, and red pesto sauce (tomato, olive oil, basil, and parmesan cheese). Carrot was finely diced by a Kenwood chopper, after being batonned. I made a potato salad with boiled potato, mayonnaise, and coriander leaf. Served with a bistro leaf salad (lettuce), drizzled in a little olive oil.  

 

Chilli and Garlic Pesto, with Green Pepper and Roasted Polenta

I started with a standard commercially available green pesto sauce (essentially made with finely ground basil, parmesan cheese, and olive oil).

I diced a whole green bell pepper, a medium sized red chilli pepper (after deseeding), and a clove of garlic, and fried them slowly in a little olive oil for about twenty minutes. The ingredients were stirred frequently to prevent burning.

Once cooked, I added two teaspoonfuls of the pesto sauce, along with some cornflour in water, to thicken the sauce. I added some salt, and stirred it through.

The sauce is spicy, on account of the diced chilli pepper, but not nearly as hot as you might imagine!

To make the polenta cakes, I first julienned a whole white onion, and shredded a medium sized tomato. Both ingredients were cooked together in an omelette pan, with a little olive oil, for twenty minutes, stirring every minute or so.

At the same time I mixed two dessert spoonfuls of finely ground cornmeal with water (200 mls), and a  dessert spoonful of apple sauce (aka stewed apple). Plus a generous pinch of salt. After that, the contents of the omelette pan were decanted into the mixing jug containing the cornmeal and water, and stirred together thoroughly.

I used a muffin tray to cook the polenta cakes (the specified quantity is enough to make six cakes). Put a little olive oil in each cake tray. Cooked in an oven preheated to 190 deg C for thirty minutes on the middle shelf. Check them after twenty minutes if you are not using an accurate oven thermometer. The polenta cakes can be retrieved very easily with a wooden skewer.

Serve with a dusting of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, or alternatively Parmesan.

Pesto Chicken Salad

A really simple one-pot pesto chicken salad, with penne pasta.

I used 200g of fine beans from Kenya, two chicken drumsticks from the fridge (roasted in the oven the day before at 180 deg C for thirty minutes, after being dressed with some sea-salt), and a large handful of penne pasta (wheat-free variety from Sainsbury's). Plus two spring onions.

Wash the beans, and bunch together with the stems all facing the same direction, and slice off the stems. Then dice the beans with a sharp knife, into 1cm pieces. Add to a pot of salted boiling water along with the similarly diced spring onions. Cook for ten minutes under glass, after turning down the heat to a simmer.

Add the penne to the pot, along with a dash of olive oil, and cook for another 10 to 12 minutes at a simmer. Stir frequently.

Strip the meat from the drumsticks and cover. No need to strip the skin before cutting with a knife. Put to one side.

Once the pasta and the beans are fully cooked, drain the water from the pot, using a sieve or the lid of the pot to hold in the contents. Then add cold water to the pot. Drain and repeat. Allow the pot and the contents to cool to room temperature (if you prefer your salads cold, put into the fridge for an hour).

Add three teaspoonfuls of green pesto sauce to the pot (which is essentially a mixture of basil and parmesan or other Italian cheese). Stir in thoroughly. Add the chicken pieces, and again, stir together thoroughly. The dish is now ready to serve.

Serve with black pepper and perhaps some Tabasco sauce. Delicious!

Ragù alla bolognese

A variation on the recipe for the Italian dish Ragù alla bolognese. Made with 400g of ground (minced) beef, with 20 per cent fat, plus celery, carrots, red onion, a tin of Italian plum tomatoes, a handful of fresh basil leaves, a bay leaf, and beef stock. Sometimes the recipe for this dish asks for diced pancetta, which is a type of Italian unsmoked bacon, thyme, nutmeg and milk. I skipped all of those. Garlic is sometimes not specified, but I added three cloves.

Brown the beef in its own fat at a high heat in a large saute pan. Add the onions (three medium red onions), finely diced carrots (two), and finely chopped celery. Stir frequently to ensure even browning of the beef. Add finely chopped garlic. The browning process should be complete in fifteen to twenty minutes.

Add boiling water to the pan, and the plum tomatoes. Mash and chop the tomatoes with either a masher or a wooden slice or paddle. Stir the ingredients together. Add the beef stock, the chopped basil leaves, and the bay leaf. Add a couple of dashes of black pepper according to taste.

Once the pan comes back to the boil, reduce the heat to the minimum,  and simmer for two hours under a glass lid. Stir occasionally.

Serve with tagliatteli, or penne pasta, spaghetti (not done in Italy, I'm told) or fusili. You can choose to mix in some yoghurt before serving. Add a topping of parmesan, or parmigiano reggiano cheese, and dust with black pepper.

If you want to reduce the level of fat in the dish, you can brown the beef separately, and drain the fat off before adding the vegetables (use a metal sieve). Alternatively, you can decant the sauce into a tall glass vessel while it is still warm. The fat will migrate to the top and solidify. You can then spoon it off and reheat the sauce before serving.

Spaghetti Bolognese

Spaghetti Bolognese, made with Aberdeen Angus ground beef, peeled tomatoes and tomato passata, blended Bramley apple, chopped onion and green beans, with basil and oregano. Plus beef and vegetable stock. 

The beef (12% fat) was browned before the chopped onion was added. The peeled tomatoes, the blended apple, and the green beans were prepared first, in a steamer. The vegetables and the passata, and the herbs, were added after the onions were mostly cooked. Water and the beef and vegetable stock were added. Simmer under glass for ninety minutes. 

Served with wheat-free spaghetti and black pepper. Can also be served with parmesan or parmigiano reggiano cheese.  

Spaghetti Bolognese