Help ~ I Think I’m Evolving!

~  Menu  ~

Leftover Haluski in a Creamy Tomato Sauce

Crunchy Fried Pappardelle

Glass of Secret Red

1 Square (honest) of Caramel Chocolate

Coffee

I bought some fancy pasta the other day; Pappardelle made by The Bay Tree - it was pretty and called out to me and, in any case, I had a cunning plan.

I wanted to try Haluski which is an Eastern European “peasant” dish of egg noodles tossed with onions and cabbage that have been cooked in butter.  I had it for dinner last night and it was a heck of a lot tastier that I expected. 

Haluski  ~ for 2

1 thinly sliced medium onion

2 good handfuls of thinly sliced cabbage

225g wide egg noodles, cooked and drained

1 generous knob (if you can imagine such a thing!) of butter

~   Melt the butter, add the onion and cook stirring from time to time till tender and starting to brown.

~   Add the cabbage and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes, its nice if this too is starting to caramelise.

~   Stir in the noodles and heat through.

That’s pretty well it.  Some versions have caraway seed added but not mine, I can’t stand them. After tasting the Haluski from the pan, as this was to be my entire meal, I doctored it a bit with some leftover Serrano ham, some Gran Padano and a little smoked black pepper.  Nice dinner.

I couldn’t eat it all, as is so often the way, and this happily lead on to today’s lunch.

As you know I do like a bit of crunch with my meals so I fried a few pieces of the leftover pappardelle in olive oil to crisp and heated the rest of it up in a mixture of my favourite bought in pasta sauce and double cream. The fried pasta came out exactly as I had hoped and imagined, crisp but with a bit of chew, and went so well with the sauce I might do it again but fry the lot!

Lunch pudding was a single square of J.D. Grosse’s 70% Dark Ecuadorean chocky with crystals of slightly salty caramel in it.  I have written about this make of gorgeous chocolate before , it is not just any chocolate, it is Lidl’s finest!  I couldn’t decide whether to have any or not, on the one hand I had just eaten a lunch high in calories and fat so didn't deserve any but, on the other hand, what did it matter after eating all that bad stuff.  So I compromised.

Help ~ I Think I’m Evolving!

I think I should stop compromising and start being more abstemious!  I'm not sure if I am just getting fat or maybe evolving if this cartoon, which I’ve had in my wallet for years, is anything to go by!

Frittata di Pasta Recipe, Stan over the Road's Chilli Oil and Chef's Coffee

~ Menu ~

Frittata di Pasta

Bit of Salad

Glass of Red Wine

Last night I fell back on an old store-cupboard favourite – penne pasta with a 50:50 mixtures of Tesco’s Finest Whole Cherry Tomato & Chill Sauce and Boursin – a really delicious meal for no work!  

When cooking professionally I just cooked a load of pasta, sold out and cooked some more without getting too much into the niceties of weight of pasta per person.  Now pasta for one or two looks ridiculously inadequate so of course I cooked too much and couldn’t eat it.

For lunch I thought “what the hey” as one does and made myself a Frittata di Pasta or Leftover Pasta Omelette as it’s sometimes called.  This is not as uninspiring as it might sound although it does, of course, depend on what you sauced your pasta with last night.

Frittata di Pasta - for 1

The leftover pasta shouldn’t be too saucy or it will make the dish fall apart.

1 large egg

half a small handful of freshly grated Parmesan

50g or so cold leftover pasta with some of its sauce still clinging to it

15ml butter

~   Preheat the grill.

~   Whisk together the egg and Parmesan and then stir in the pasta.

~   Melt the butter in a non stick frying pan and when foamy tip in the pasta mix to form an egg and pasta pancake.

~   Cook till the bottom is firm and then slip it under the grill to cook the top.

You might as well pin this for later!

I’ve just thought - whilst I’m here I might as well mention yesterday’s lunch.  When cheffing at the Tamarind Club I often put the following dish on the menu ...

It was great; soft sweet squishy tomatoes, creamy melting cheese and zingy hot oil with, of course, some crispy chargrilled bread (we used to get seriously fabulous bread from the college bakery at that time) to soak up the wonderful juices. 

Stan over the Road was, and still is, a pretty English girl who also has a much more feminine name; Abigail.   Anyhoo, in her spare time she made a seemingly constant stream of chilli oil (just because she could, I suppose) and kept us stocked up at all times.  I was very grateful, used the delicious stuff in all sorts of dishes and made a feature of it in several.

I don’t eat a lot when I am cooking but on a double shift I would get a bit peckish and, if I had time, would sometimes indulge in a little chargrilled bread drizzled with Stan’s chilli oil and sprinkled with freshly shredded Gran Padano.  The girls I worked with in the kitchen would tease me - “White people, dey fonny!”  - but I really enjoyed it washed down with a cup of “chef’s coffee”. 

So yesterday when a bit stumped about lunch I suddenly remembered a little bottle of chilli oil in the cupboard (not Stan’s as it happens – Uncle Roy’s, whoever he is) and decided to recreate this “meal” for old times’ sake and because I like it. 

“Chef’s coffee” is really red wine in a coffee cup so that it’s not too obvious that one is indulging at work. 

Having said that, I have worked in places where drinking is not so much frowned upon as compulsory!  

Many a time I’ve been slaving away with a whole string of orders up when one of the wait staff have rushed in with a tray of Tequila Slammers (or Margaritas or, worst of all, Jagermeister – yuk) for the kitchen and the only way to cope is to down the stuff and get back to work.

Cheers!