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A sexy tale of swedes and pasta
This piece of writing, which was originally written for The Sunday Age, is reproduced here, word for word, because it makes me laugh whenever I reread it.
I think I must be drifting into some sort of mental illness. The symptoms manifested themselves just the other day when I strolled into the local fruit shop and [...]
Goat’s cheese and spinach ravioli
There was a time when I thought you couldn’t make ravioli unless you had one of those extraordinary instruments that attach somehow to the top of those extra useful, tried and trusted, hand-powered pasta machines. The ravioli extra is something like a laundry shute, as seen in forties hotel movies. Two strips of pasta approach each other from opposite sides and a highly flavoured mixture is gobbled up as the strips rush through the machine. At least that’s what happens in the literature.
Pesto, by hand
I could eat pesto until my hair turned green. It has everything that good eating should have – the freshness of the season, through the basil, the pungency of the garlic, the twists and depths of flavour of the olive oil and the Parmesan, the chunky texture of the nuts, and the romance of thousands of years and millions of hands making it, loving it.
Pumpkin gnocchi, given a grilling
Gnocchi are now to be seen in the smart shops and flash kitchens across town. A certain irony there. What is, essentially, not much more than what my mum used to call a dumpling, a very working-class, peasant- level feed, is hitting it off in places which house Range Rovers and clipped poodles.
I can’t think [...]
Cheating with scallops
I remember when scallops were so plentiful you would buy them in batter from your local fish’n'chippery; when they used bulldozers to get into the piles of them at the market (now they use tongs); when they were the cheapest of cheap. They were the affordable shellfish. Not any more.
Mushrooms with pasta; or not far from truffles as the crow flies
If you take risks you’ll learn something new every day. Often it will be something that you shouldn’t have tried in the first place; occasionally you will hit on a winner.
Spirals of pasta with red peppers and chorizo sausage
Red peppers are not red peppers until they have been roasted and had their blistered skins removed. Then they are as different from the unskinned version as autumn apples are from those of spring – ‘fresh’ from the cool store.
The roasting process concentrates the flavours marvellously, compressing what is already something pretty special into something [...]
Hot dogs, given new life with pappardelle
The thick tomato sauce from the previous recipe has plenty of uses, especially if you don’t drown the pasta with it. Just let it hold on to the ribbons or curls or whatever. I have found it particularly attractive when faced with leftover hot dogs or frankfurters after one of the kids’ birthday parties. It’s [...]
Fusilli in a thick tomato sauce with salami
In superior times, specifically those times when running a restaurant was my life, it was not seen to be de rigeur to have anything to do with the dried form of pasta. Not that there was anything absolutely wrong with such a thing – more it was to do with effort being seen to be made.
Mistaken identity, or clams with pasta shapes
Time tends to fog the minute details of visits to the great cities of the world. Thus anything that has happened to me in Paris or New York or Rome or Florence turns into one of life’s greatest moments. Which means the tagliatelle alia vongole I took at a tiny trattoria just outside the Santa [...]