Pasta with Fresh Broadbeans and Ricotta

Sorry. Sometimes the effort of dreaming up 'witty' titles just gets too much and I'm forced back into being descriptive.

I haven't actually made this yet. I bought all the ingredients and even podded the beans, but then a minor domestic emergency happened. But I'm looking forward to it tonight. It was one of those 'What if I...' ideas I have while waiting at traffic lights.

Signore Inginere Anton Gelli is one of The Pie's longest standing members. In time, that is. In stature he's a bit of a shortarse. He's been with us before we were even a website, let alone a blog. As he will attest, different forms of pasta have entirely different functions, and it's important to use a sympathetic noodle. I think this one would work with linguine, but as it was I settled on trofie. The site I stole this picture from tells me that they're Seattle's current 'it' pasta, but don't let that put you off. I nearly got orrichiete. That would have been quite wrong. For starters, they are too similar in shape and size to broad beans. I can't explain why that's important. It just is. Like...if you make a sauce with whole cherry tomatoes and basil, you have to serve it with buccatini. Serving it with spaghetti would be as wrong as serving garlic and chilli with buccatini.

But I digress...

Take your fresh broad beans and pod them. Some would also advocate peeling them, but life's to short. Just buy fresh, young beans.

Braise them very briefly in some olive oil, a little stock, some fresh thyme and garlic. I suggest leaving the garlic whole to keep it nice and sweet.
Cook your trofie.
Add the drained trofie to the broad bean pan.
Toss together with some crumbled ricotta, chopped flat-leaf parsley, a little fresh mint and snipped chives.
Serve topped with coarsely grated pecorino.

Sgr Gelli and I have also been discussing biscuits. Alexei Sayle once pointed out that a lot of biscuits seem to be named after Italian leaders:

"You've got your Bourbon biscuits, your Garibaldi biscuits and your Peak Frean's Mussolini Assortment."

(Links provided for the assistance of USAnian readers who may be unfamilar with UKanian crunchy comestibles. Oh...and we mean 'cookies', not scones with gravy.)

Following further research, Sgr Gelli has discovered Jacobs Jacobites. Leading Jacobite insurgent Bonnie Prince Charlie was, of course, Italian. Don't believe all those pictures on the shortbread tins! They're papist propaganda.

Eggy Bamyasi

A thoroughly misleading title, that. Not only does this ingredient contain no okra, but none of it's ingredients are canned (prizes for spotting the reference).

While I'm talking about okra...why do some cookbooks insist on translating them as 'ladyfingers'? I maintain that the only time one comes across okra is in relation to a cuisine that actually uses it. So why have an English translation. Mind you - I suppose it stops any quarrels about whether to call them 'okra' or 'bhindi'. Or 'bamya', even.

But this isn't about okra. No. It's about...

Cauliflower Kookoo

A kookoo is an Iranian omlette-y thing, similar to an Arabic eggah, an Italian frittata or a Spanish tortilla. Here it's the addition of herbs that gives it its particular Iranian character.

Take some cauliflower. Floretify it. Steam until it's a little soft, but not squishy.
Shred an oinion. Sauté it in olive oil in an omelette-sized non-stick pan until it just begins to brown.
Add in the cauliflower and a goodly amount of sliced garlic.
Once it's all nicely amalgamated, put in lots of finely chopped fresh dill, finely-chopped flat leaf parsley and a little fresh mint. Salt and pepper. Mix it all up.
Beat up some eggs. Four or so. Add to the pan and blend it all about, lifting up the cauli mix a few times with a spatula so that the whole pan is thouroughly eggy. Then start using the spatula to pat the top flat and start prising the edges away from the edge of the pan.
Continue cooking a while until it seems reasonably set. Then brown the top under a grill.
Ease onto a plate and leave to cool. (Putting a plate on top of the pan and inverting sometimes works).
Serve at room temperature with some nice bread, a crisp salad and Suitably middle Eastern pickles.

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Dick Cheney says that the suicides in Guantanamo were 'an act of war'. The Pie urges him and his fellow government members to retaliate in kind immediately.

Happy biiirthday to Pooo-ooop...

It was Poop's birthday party at the weekend. He had sweeties, jammie dodgers, jellies and a Fifi Flowertot birthday cake. He's a most enormous fan of Fifi.

The grown-ups had more sophisticated fare. Today's Big Bumper Edition of Flaming Pie lists all the recipes you need for a simple summer party.


Chilled Pea Soup.

Boil up some vegetable stock with some onions. Throw in some frozen peas and a couple of mint leaves. Allow to cool. Liquidise thoroughly. Adjust the seasoning. Just before serving, throw in lots of ice cubes. Serve with a spoon of sour cream and a sprinking of chives.

I love the German word for chives: der Schnittlauch. Literally, 'snipping leeks'.

Tomato, Olive and Basil Tart.

Preferably, make your own shortcut pastry:
Half the weight of fat/butter to plain flour. Rub together (or food-process). Add just enough water to bind. Wrap in clingfilm and chill thoroughly.

Take a flan dish. Grease and flour. Tip: Shortcust pastry is very hard to deal with. One way is to roll it between two sheets of clingfilm. Another is to grate it into the dish and just squash it over the bottom and sides. However this doesn't work so well with store-bought pastry, which tends to be more elastic.

Bake the pastry case blind. Either cover it in rice/ dried beans/ pebbles and bake, or cover with kitchen foil, pressed to conform to the shape, bake a little, then remove and bake some more until it dries out a bit. Either way - you don't want to cook it thoroughly yet.

Now take the best, vine-grown, small tomatoes you can find. Cut into quarters and scatter, skin side down, in the pastry case. Chop up a few black olives and instersperse amongst the tomatoes. Tear up a good handful of basil leaves and do the same. Drizzle with a tiny amount of olive oil (don't overdo it). Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Bake in a low-ish oven.

Curried Rice Salad

This was the surprise hit.

Cook some boiled rice. Mix up with mayonnaise, mild curry powder (one containing fennel/anise for preference), finely chopped red pepper, chopped spring onions/ scallions/ syboes, some almonds, some raisins, some chopped banana, salt to taste.

Cucumber Sandwiches

Peel a cucumber or two and slice as thin as you can. I used a mandolin (but I'm sure a banjo would do just as well). Put the slices in a colander, sprinkle with salt, add a little vinegar and leave for about an our. Pat them dry on a clean teatowel. Add a few twists of black pepper.

Butter some sliced bread (ideally Hovis, failing that wholemeal) with unsalted butter. Spread with a thin layer of cucumber and make a butty. Press firmly together. Slice off the crusts and cut either into triangular quarters or fingers. Chill before serving.

Lettuce

My Stalinist approach to salad.

Take a nice lettuce or two (Cos, Romaine, never Iceberg!). Tear it up (It's a French thing. Apparently the French never cut lettuce). Simply dress with olive oil, a little vinegar (I used the kind that Delia Smith pronounces 'Boar's Mick'), a little sea salt, a little freshly ground black pepper.

Fruit Salad

For the first time in ages, I managed to score some decent nectarines...in Asda, of all places. For starters, thety were actually ripe. They had deep red skins and white flesh and a wonderful, perfumed taste. They made a great fruit salad, along with watermelon, honeydew melon and Packham pears.

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The Italic Bits

According to the US State Department, suicide can be regarded as 'a publicity stunt'. Do you reckon that Max Clifford might pick up on this for his celeb clients? Here's hoping!


Open Source is a great idea. You can get Open Source Software...which means that you'll never again be stuck for something to do with your spare time...even Open Source Beer and (provided you can read Japanese) OpenCola. And coming soon...Open Source God. It seems that a bunch of geeks are getting together to make instructions on how to make a God Helmet publically available: a clever arrangement of magnets that allows people to...er...see god.


Radio 4's 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' continues to deliver outrageous lines into our homes in the early evening. Two recent examples from Humphrey Littleton concerning the scorer, the ever-delectable Samantha:

"Samantha has to shoot off to meet her new gentleman friend. She says he's going into business growing scrumpy apples. If his predictions are correct, he's going to be very big in cider."

and

"Samantha has to go and by a birthday gift for her gentleman friend. He likes to play with model boats in his bathtub. She's thought about him long and hard and wants to give him a little tug."

Ahfangew!

More Samantha smut here.