cheese-filled cannelloni

The other day I found a packet of dry cannelloni tubes in the pantry, & decided we’d have cannelloni for tea. The sauce was going to be easy: we’re slowly working through the packets of tomato sauce that I froze last summer, so out came one of those, plus there was a 450g packet of beef mince in the freezer. So I turned the oven to heat to 180 C and next, once the meat was defrosted (microwaves are a wonderful invention) I browned it in a frying pan over medium heat, stirring to break it up, & then added a packet of sauce & left it to simmer very gently. But what to put in the tubes of pasta?

In the fridge were eggs, a block of parmesan cheese, and 250g tubs of ricotta cheese & sour cream. I emptied the 2 tubs into a bowl & beat them together with a wooden spoon, before beating in the egg and some grated parmesan. Next I chopped together fresh parsley, basil mint (because I still don’t have any basil) and lemon thyme & mixed that into the cheese mixture. I used a teaspoon to fill the pasta tubes, standing each on its end to do this. In retrospect I could have used a piping bag, but oh well…

I spooned a little of the sauce over the base of an oblong casserole dish, then arranged a layer of filled cannelloni over the top. More sauce on the pasta, and then the next layer of cheese-filled tubes, and finally the rest of the sauce. Because I felt like a cheese overload I sprinkled a little more parmesan over the top before putting the dish into the oven – it took about 35 minutes to cook, by which time the sauce was bubbling & the cheese golden. (You can check that it’s cooked by pushing a skewer into the pasta – there should be very little resistance.)

We had it with salad & some steamed broccoli from the garden – there was plenty for 4 with leftovers for lunch the next day.

 

pumpkin, feta & walnut ravioli

We had several friends to dinner last night, & as one has a particular fondness for vegetarian food, I thought I’d do something with some of our plentitude of pumpkins. I decided on ravioli because I rather enjoy making pasta, & was enticed by the idea of a combination of feta, pumpkin & walnuts that bubbled to the front of my brain.

First up, the pumpkin(s) needed roasting. I picked out a big butternut pumpkin & – because you can never have too much pumpkin (had there been any excess it would have ended up in bread) – a couple of the cute yellow-&-white striped minis. Once split in half & seeds scooped out, they went cut-side down on a teflon sheet in a roasting dish, to bake at 180 C for about 40 minutes.

Then, the pasta. Traditionalists may flinch at this – but because I’d got other things on the go as well (making the dip for folks to enjoy with beer, not to mention the pastry for dessert), I decided to let the bread machine do the kneading of my flour & eggs with a littlebitta oil. I’d tried this before and with good results; you just have to keep an eye on it in case there’s a need for extra liquid or flour.

Once the pumpkins were cooked & had cooled a little, I scooped the flesh into a bowl & mashed it roughly, before stirring in about 1/2 c coarsely-grated parmesan, 150 g creamy feta (crumbled into bits about 1 cm on a side), & a cup of roughly-chopped walnuts (you want a bit of firmness to the bite, so don’t process them to the point where you have walnut flour!).

While I do have one of those little trays for making ravioli I’ve only used it the once. Instead I make use of my 4cm round ravioli cutter (a bit like a biscuit cutter but with a handle). So yesterday I rolled chunks of my dough ever more thinly through our pasta machine. With each sheet of pasta, I laid it flat on a floured bench and placed heaped teaspoonfuls of the pumpkin, cheese’n’nut mix onto half the sheet, well spaced. Then I slowly folded the other half of the sheet down over them, pressing down around each mound of filling to exclude as much air as possible, before cutting out the little pasta packets. As I made them, I dusted each one lightly with flour before placing them on racks covered with baking paper, then covering them with a dry tea towel & leaving them to dry. I ended up with over 6 dozen, but then there were 7 of us for dinner so that sounded right (although it looked an awful lot!).

The sauce was easy as I have rather a lot in the freezer 🙂 Just needed to defrost a couple of packets & then heat them through in the microwave, while boiling the water to cook the ravioli. Which, once the water’s boiling, don’t take long to cook. Pop them carefully into the pot, & then once they’ve come to the surface & the water’s returned to the boil, they should need only 2-3 minutes more – fish one out & try it to be sure.

To serve, I layered the pasta with the sauce in two large oblong dishes, and brought them to the table along with a bowl of finely-grated parmesan and a big salad of lettuce & finely-sliced red pepper from the garden.

The daughter swears she hates pumpkin. But we noticed that last night, she had two helpings 😀

pumpkin risotto

This year we have a plethora of petite pumpkins – the shot below shows rather less than half the crop. Pretty, aren’t they? We decided to grow mini-pumpkins as while the husband & I love them, the daughter has them on her list of Food to Avoid If Possible. (No accounting for some tastes…) Anyway, the seed packets informed us that we’d get just 3-4 fruit per plant, so we planted quite a few, wanting to try the different varieties on offer. And most of the plants grew like Topsy & produced a dozen or so cute little pumpkins. Which, as well as looking gorgeous, taste great. I just need to come up with a range of ways to cook them.

So the other night, I made pumpkin risotto. First up, I cut two of our larger fruit in half, scooped out the seeds, & put them cut side down in a baking tray lined with a teflon sheet before baking them at 180 degrees C until soft – about 45 minutes. When they were done, the cut surfaces were slightly caramelised, giving added depth to the flavour.

While that was happening I started in on the risotto part of the meal. A thinly-sliced onion went into one of my big saucepans with 25 g of butter & a splash of olive oil, to soften over a low heat. After 5 or so minutes I added several cloves of garlic, peeled & sliced, followed by 2 c of arborio rice. I stirred all that together until the rice started to go translucent round the edges & was glisteningly covered with the butter/oil.

At which point I opened a bottle of the rather nice 2011 Villa Maria gewurtztraminer, added 250 ml to the rice – & poured myself a glass as well 🙂  – then stirred everything together & turned the heat right down, so that it was all barely simmering. Once the liquid was almost all absorbed, I started adding a litre of hot vegetable stock (again, 250 ml at a time), stirring & then leaving each lot of liquid to be absorbed before adding the next.

While this was going on I also cooked 4 large rashers of shoulder bacon in a very little butter (I find it tends to stick, otherwise) until crispy round the edges. Once that was done I drained it & chopped it into smallish pieces, before cooking 12-15 sage leaves in the fat that remained in the pan. Be careful with this – they need very little time to go crispy!

By this time the pumpkin was done & the risotto was creamy & tender. I added 1/2 c of sour cream to the rice & stirred that through, following it with the bacon & the pumpkin, scooped out of its skin with a dessertspoon to give reasonably big chunks. And then we ate it all up, with lashings of parmesan & the rest of the wine on the side. (No, Trevor, I did not drink it all!)

pizza – for dessert?

One of my brothers introduced me to this variation on pizza, way back when we still lived in Palmerston North. (He’d been keeping an eye on our place while we were away, & we’d been wondering where all the grapes had got to…) Our muscatel grapes are ripe at last, so I thought this would make a good dessert for the family.

I make pizza dough quite a lot, by hand or in the bread machine. There’s little difference in time between the 2 methods (both take around 45 minutes), but for this one I used the machine to do the kneading as I had other stuff on the go in the kitchen at the same time.

Into the mixing bowl I put 2 c strong (bread) flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 Tblsp olive oil, 3/4 c water, & 2 Tlbsp raw sugar. Normally I use very little sugar in pizza dough but this time I wanted it to be sweetish, on account of it being for dessert. Then I put it in the machine on the ‘pizza’ setting & set it going.

While the bread machine did its bit, I put my big pizza stone in the oven (200 degrees C) to heat, & set about preparing the grapes. I wanted around 2 cups, & had a mix of fat green grapes from the market & our own lovely golden-pink muscatels. The latter, which are smallish, I just pulled from their stems – they tend to split a little, but this is good as the escaped juices caramelise in cooking. The big green ones I halved, & flicked out their seeds with the point of a knife.

Once the dough had finished its brief rising, I kneaded it a little to get rid of the air bubbles & then rolled & stretched it to a disc a little smaller than the pizza stone. (I usually do this on a Teflon sheet & slide it onto the stone from a baking tray.) Then I studded it liberally with grapes – green ones cut side up – & sprinkled everything with 2-3 Tblsp white sugar before putting the pizza in the oven for about 20 minutes: the fruit should soften and the sugar & juices caramelise.

The scent as the finished dish came from the oven was that of a good dessert wine 🙂

a very nice risotto

This morning I got a pack (around 600g) of rump steak out of the freezer to defrost, before heading off to work. I’d originally intended a warm salad (there are still a lot of lettuces in the garden & some tomatoes too), but by the end of a trying day I was thinking “comfort food!” So I stopped off at the supermarket – we needed milk anyway – & picked up some button mushrooms & a 200g packet of marscapone. And although I’d been contemplating beef stroganoff (my version of it, anyway), this is what I came up with.

First I put some dried mushrooms (what the husband calls ‘fancy’ mushrooms, ie porcini, shiitake & so on) to soak in a bowl, covered with boiling water. While they softened, I started 50g of butter melting in one of my stockpots and added a peeled, thinly-sliced brown onion &, after that had been cooking for a few minutes over a low heat, several cloves of minced garlic. (I have a garlic crusher but I usually can’t be bothered with using it; it’s so fiddly to clean afterwards!)

Next, I added 2 c of arborio rice to the pan & stirred everything so that all the rice grains glistened with melted oniony butter. Once the edges of the grains had started to go translucent I poured in the first cup of liquid. Usually I use white wine for this (a glass for the risotto, a glass for me…) but we’d none opened. For some reason the husband wasn’t interested in opening one; “aha!” he said, “what about your cider?” I thought, hmmmm, & used a cup of apple cider, then stirred everything & left the rice to absorb all the liquid while I went on to the next step: draining the mushrooms – don’t discard the liquid! you’ll need it – & slicing them (not too thinly).

By this time the first lot of liquid had disappeared, so I tipped in the mushroom liquor, opened a 1 litre tetrapak of vegetable stock & put a cup of that into the microwave to heat, & started cutting up the little button mushrooms from New World. And also one of the long ‘sweet point’ red peppers from the garden. And in went the next cup of hot stock, followed by mushrooms & pepper. It’ll take another couple of rounds of heating stock, adding it, stirring well & leaving to cook on a very low heat before the stock is all absorbed.

After the 2nd cup of stock sloshed into the pan,  I trotted off outside & fired up the barbecue, then brushed the steak with a little oil & put it on the grill – 2-3 minutes on each side – before taking it back to the kitchen, serving the risotto another helping of stock, & then slicing the meat thinly across the grain. It was still quite rare, but I knew the heat of the rice would get the meat to a state that the rest of the family would tolerate 🙂

Finally, I opened the marscapone, stirred that into the risotto, then added the meat & stirred again before checking the flavour & adding a good slosh of soy sauce. And served the meal with a bowl of finely-grated parmesan & a side of what I suspect are just about the last of the season’s runner beans, finely-sliced & steamed.

And yes! even after everyone had had seconds, there will be leftovers for lunch 🙂

using more of the garden’s bounty: vegetable lasagne

Something else that we seem to have a lot of in the garden – as well as all those tomatoes – is pumpkins. While the daughter dislikes them, the husband & I are rather keen on pumpkins, but even he agrees that he might have got just a little carried away in his plantings last year. With reason, mind you – after growing the usual butternuts & crown pumpkins & a few supermarket squash last year, we found ourselves with an awful lot of the things: far too many for the two pumpkin-eaters to take care of. So when we came across some small-fruit varieties, we thought we’d try them out. Well! Small the fruit may be, but the plants still sprawl everywhere, & they’re amazingly prolific given that the seed packets usually said ‘2-3 fruit per plant’. And some of them are already ripe.

So, since I had freshly-made tomato sauce to hand, I decided on vegetable lasagne for tea. (I’d like to say that I made the pasta for it, but honesty compels me to admit that I didn’t; I used a packet of fresh lasagne sheets from the supermarket.)

First I split a couple of our cute little pumpkins in half, removed the seeds, brushed them with oil & put them in the oven (180 C) to bake. Once they were cooked & cool enough to handle, I scooped the lovely rich, dry-ish flesh into a bowl. In another bowl I mixed 500g of cottage cheese with one large egg & a decent handful of chopped parsley & garlic chives. And I set the first of our spinach to cook in briskly boiling water. Then I assembled the lasagne, using a largish roasting dish as I had 5 hungry mouths to feed.

On the bottom of the dish went about a cup & a half of sauce. Then I laid half the pasta sheets on top of the sauce, & topped them with the pumpkin, the spinach leaves, & some more sauce. Atop that went the rest of the pasta, followed by the cottage cheese mix. More sauce over the top of that, sprinkled with grated tasty cheese, & then the lasagne went into the oven (180 C again) for about 30 minutes until it was bubbling & the cheese was golden.

We had it with salad, & – some time later – blackberry & apple crumble for dessert.

my most favourite brunch in the world

When the daughter was quite young, in her first few years of primary school, we started going to the Hamilton Community School of Music, where we both learned to play the recorder properly. By which I mean, we ended up with a group of like-minded children & adults, playing some fairly complex music on soprano, treble, tenor & bass recorders.

Anyway, due to the blandishments of a colleague of mine, we also got into the habit of having brunch in town after class (occasionally meeting said colleague for coffee) at the Best Cafe in Town (aka Scott’s Epicurean). The food was – & continues to be! – great, & the staff quickly learn to recognise regulars & their little foibles. Which in our case meant that the daughter (for a couple of years anyway, until her tastes matured 🙂 ) had a ‘brown’ breakfast: hot or iced chocolate, depending on the season, & a slice of Scott’s delectable chocolate brownie. (Which comes with yoghurt & fruit compote, on the side.) And me? I still tend to have the ‘green’ breakfast: feijoa juice &/or green tea, & what the menu oh so correctly describes as their ‘addictive’ alio olio.

Which is truly delicious & incredibly simple: good pasta, cooked al dente, & dressed with virgin olive oil, large quantities of finely chopped parsley (you can never have enough of either), lots of crushed garlic, & just enough in the way of chilli flakes to give it a bit of a bite. And served with a generous helping of finely grated parmesan. Yum! (The husband used to cut his up with knife & fork, rather than using spoon & fork to wind up a mouthful, until this habit was noticed by the wonderful Italian waiter, who carefully explained to my significant other the error of his ways 🙂 )

And despite its simplicity, I’ve never been able to exactly recreate the Scott’s version. Which is one of the reasons we keep on going back – I think it’s about 13 years now, & still going strong!

herbs, chicken & cheese

Even a fast cycle ride home after work (22 minutes door-to-door) didn’t quite get rid of the stress & annoyance of a rather trying day. So I decided to take it out on dinner. Literally.

You see, I’d been mulling over thoughts on what to do with the 3 boneless chicken breasts I’d got out to defrost that morning. I suppose you could call the chosen outcome, ‘chicken olives’ (if you remember ‘beef olives’, you’ll know what I mean).

First, I picked a handful of herbs from my garden: lemon thyme, marjoram, parsley, young spring onions & a couple of leaves of sage. These I chopped finely & put in a bowl together with 250g cream cheese (you could use the ‘lite’ version if you wanted to feel virtuous), some grated parmesan, and an egg to bind it all together. Once that was thoroughly mixed I added 3 rashers of chopped bacon that I’d fried gently while dealing with the herbs, & mixed again. The combo smelled – & tasted! – delicious.

Next, the anti-stress part: after removing the fat from the chicken I sliced each breast into 2 schnitzels – and then beat them with my trusty wooden rolling pin until they were about 5mm thick and twice their original area. After which I was definitely feeling better 🙂 After putting a heaping table-spoon of the herb-&-cheese mix onto each schnitzel, I rolled the meat around the filling. My original intention had been to sear them in the pan I’d cooked the bacon in, with all those lovely drippings** and brown crunchy bits 🙂 But I could see that this would probably lead to my chicken rolls falling apart, or the filling oozing out, so I simply put each one into a casserole dish as I rolled them.

The final step was to pour some homemade pasta sauce, full of tomatoes & basil & garlic & red pepper, & seasoned with smoky paprika, over the top of the rolls & pop them in the oven at 180 degrees C. I basted them with the sauce a couple of times while they cooked, which took around 45 minutes. And we ate them with hedgehog potatoes & steamed brocolli.

Yes, Annette, I know you said to serve the sauce on the side 🙂 Maybe next time!

** Incidentally the drippings did not go to waste, for there was filling over. Enough filling to make a lovely toasted sandwich, using wholemeal bread (also very virtuous, 🙂 ) and fried in the drippings, as a starter to share between the 3 of us.

eating italian at our place

I really enjoy making pasta by hand – the kneading & rolling are rather therapeutic 🙂 (And thanks to Annette & David, who persuaded us that we really really needed a pasta machine – for the rolling & sometimes the cutting – for an anniversary present to ourselves.) I also enjoy the fact that now it’s spring (although tonight’s temperature belies that!), the garden is well & truly producing: broad beans, spinach, spring onions, spuds – it’s just great to be able to go out & pick fresh veges for tea. And strawberries for dessert! Anyway, we had a couple of good friends coming to dinner last Saturday night, so I made (hand-cut) tagliatelle, and this is what I threw together to go with it (quantities worked well for 5 people):

Veges:

• a large head of brocolli, cut into florets, blanched & refreshed in cold water
• 2 bundles of asparagues, washed & cut into 2-3cm lengths & blanched/refreshed
• the green part of 5-6 spring onions, roughly chopped (keep the white parts for the sauce)
• broad beans – about 1&1/2 cups of podded beans (I try to pick them at the young, sweet stage so I don’t have to peel the beans themselves)

Plus 4-5 rashers of bacon, grilled & roughly chopped.

Sauce:

• heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy pan & add the thinly sliced spring onion ‘whites’.
• while they’re softening, peel & crush as much garlic as you like (I used a couple of heads – we still have quite a bit left from last season’s crop & have been pleasantly surprised at how well it’s kept; this year’s crop is looking great in the garden!). Add this to the pan & cook a little but don’t let it colour!
• tip in a 250g tub of sour cream & as this liquefies, stir in 250ml chicken stock. Mix to combine & cook down a little. At this point the mix looked a bit thinner than I wanted (you can see why the daughter finds me infuriating to cook with!) so I thickened with a little flour. On reflection I then thinned it again with about 100ml of cream 😀
• add the veges & bacon to the pan, stir to mix & heat gently until nicely heated through.

Serve over the freshly cooked pasta, with lots of fresh grated parmesan. And enjoy it – we certainly did!