Georgia: I think that Jamie’s first books seem a lifetime ago. So much has happened in food and our lives. I’ve slightly moved on and forgotten some of those recipes, except for this one which we still do regularly. This recipe is low effort, high impact food. It looks great, especially when you cut it open in the middle and yet you can prepare it hours beforehand and have it all ready and it takes just half an hour to do.
Tom: So you made this pasta yourself then, with white wine?
Kirstin: Yup….oh no, sorry. I had to do a million other things today. So that promise of making you pasta is on hold again. But I will do it. Honest.
Tom: Oh don’t worry about it. Making your own pasta is over-rated. We did it when we were young.
Kirstin: But now we have a special thing for the Kitchen Aid to make it easier. So I really do want to do it. I just need a time machine to add more hours to the day.
Tom: Good point. We really should try it again. Anyway, this sauce was good!
How’s your Italian coming along, having read this blog this month? I made– but maybe you’ve deduced this already– Pasta with Lemon and Basil.
Maureen: So this is spaghetti with lemon, basil and tomatoes. What do you think?
Nicholas (8): It’s too sour!
Andrew (11): The lemon masks the taste of the other things, I think.
Maureen: It’s possible I did the lemon all wrong. The recipe said to take an unwaxed lemon “cut into small segments,” which I took to mean to slice it into sections as thinly as possible, including the skin. But now that I’m thinking about it, it probably meant to cut off all of the skin and then slice the remaining lemon up, like Nigella does for her green beans, which I make all the time. Sorry about that. You don’t have to eat the lemon slices.
Or, for those of you loathe to take out your Italian-English dictionary, Leftover Pasta Omelette and Garlic Soup. (Frankly it sounds better in Italian.)
Maureen: Tonight is the night we’ve been waiting for: the night where I try to recreate the truly magical dish of a spaghetti omelette, like we had at Bocca di Lupo.
Tim: Yes, I’ve been looking forward to tonight.
Maureen: (Bringing it to the table) This has got to be one the craziest things I’ve made recently. But I can’t wait to try it. I can’t believe it actually worked!
Andrew (11, laughing): This is just… I don’t know.. I’m at a loss for words!
Nicholas (Now 8! Happy Birthday to him): This is SO delicious.
Tom: Hmmm….this is kind of like a salad. It’s really nice. It’s very fresh and feels very healthy.
Kirstin: Exactly my feelings too. It was super easy to make. I prepared all the vegetables beforehand and then tossed with the pasta. I like the crunchiness of the pepper with the pasta.
Tom: There’s raw garlic in this too, right?
Kirstin: Oh yes! Of course.
Tom: Well, I can see us eating this on Summer evenings in Italy.
Kirstin: Too right. I keep finding capers in the tomatoes. I don’t even like capers, but with tomatoes they taste just great.
Tom: Yes, I don’t normally like capers either. But they add salt in this recipe.
Kirstin: So I’ll be making this one again then. Salad and pasta in one bowl.
Or, for the non-Italian speakers amoung you, Risotto with Pecorino, Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar.
Tim: Did they advise you to use 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, like we had at the Museo del Balsamico Tradizionale in Spilamberto in Italy?
Maureen: No, they didn’t. But if they had, I’ll be that would have transformed this dish. This balsamic is just some Belazu balsamic, which is way too sweet, now that we know what the really good stuff tastes like.
Tim: You’re right. This balsamic is not that good.
Maureen: Now that we know why balsamic is so expensive [Editor's note: It takes years for the best balsamic to mature], we should make an effort to get the expensive stuff. It’s like my Grandma always said, “Buy the best you can afford.” So what do you think of the risotto?
Maureen: Our next book will be “Two Greedy Italians,” starring Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo. A month of Italian food! What could be better?
Kirstin: After a month of eating cakes…
Maureen: We’re going to be so fat. Maybe the next book should be, “Drinking Water and Eating Ice: How to make it taste better.”
Kirstin: It’s the warm weather. It brings out our love of Italian food.
Maureen: We can be two greedy Italian food lovers. But it doesn’t have to be warm for me to feel that way.
Kirstin: Really? As the soon as the sun comes out, I’m all about Italian food. I’m really curious about this book; it’ll be interesting to see if it will be new things, or old things done really well. And we both have books by both of these guys separately. Are there any recipes you are already eyeing up?
Maureen: It has a recipe for spaghetti fritatta! I’ve been looking for a recipe for that ever since we had a delicious version of it at Bocca di Lupo for Tim’s birthday last year. Hopefully there will be some new recipes in there for us too. It’ll be interesting to see because it’s both northern and southern Italian cooking. I tend to favour the north. Also, there’s a TV series on the BBC starting this week so we can see how to do things.
Kirstin: I’m hoping for some new proper Italian recipes; not Jamie doing Italian or Nigella doing Italian, it’s Italians doing Italian, which should be good. Have you fancied any other recipes?
Maureen: I like the look of the antipasto recipies and lots of small dish recipes. I’m definitely looking forward to cooking up some nice things to sit out back and eat in the sunshine, which we won’t be able to do now until August.
Kirstin: Ha ha! You’re probably right! Still, we can but dream…
Tom: We’ve been talking about the origins of the name of this sauce.
Kirstin: Yes, because that’s why I don’t cook it normally.
Tom: Why does the name put you off?
Kirstin: It’s all that whore business.
Tom: So, our googling has revealed an interesting new possibility.
Kirstin: Oh yes?
Tom: I mean, the usual theory that most cookbooks don’t want to mention is that the sauce gets its name from the fact that it smells like sex. But oh, no. Most books can’t possibly say that. So they use words like “pungent”, mention anchovies and generally wave their hands. Pah. Anyway, that’s a plausible theory. Also, there’s the idea that this is a dish that could be whipped up quickly between, er, clients. But it turns out that there’s another theory that even the Victorians would approve of!
Time to table just over 34 minutes.
And there’s no conversation for this post, as it’s just me preparing, cooking, eating, tidying up and blogging away tonight.
But first, Jamie, if you’re reading this, my one small request about the next edition of this book would be for you to list the equipment needed for each recipe, especially if every minute needs to be accounted for. A small gripe, I know, but it’s difficult to keep with the flow when having to get more kit out all the time while trying to work to a deadline.
Maureen: So boys, this is from my new cookbook for the blog.
Nicholas (age 7): What’s a blog?
Maureen: Stop pretending you don’t know what a blog is. You know. Especially since I’ve had one since 2005 when we were training for the London Marathon together.
Nicholas: Oh yeah. You’re right!
Maureen: Back to the issue at hand. What did you think?
Nicholas: It’s good.
