Pork and Pepperoni

The inspiration for this dish riffs pretty heavily on a post from Ideas in Food, I highly recommend getting them into your daily reading list, or hit them up on twitter. I actually have version two of this on the go now as I write, I’ve amped up the seasoning and am going to experiment a little more with the cooking and serving, so not really the same dish but this served as a springboard to push ideas further.

Counter to my last post about getting maximum comfort for little effort this post is really pushing things in the other direction, but holy heck is it worth it! It’ll take a little time and a little bit of investment of going to a butcher and getting a decent slab of pork belly, which may or may not be frozen, a supermarket is not going to have what you need, I’ve never seen a good three inch thick slab of belly at one, and quite frankly you’ll probably be paying twice the price. I ended up by chance at Preston's in town after doing my restock at Yan's Asian supermarket and they just happened to have a good deal going on frozen bellies, so $20 later and more than 2kg heavier, I left a happy chappy.

There is a bit to this but it’s not really all active, there is a lot of down time, so there are no stress about getting stuff done on time. You’re going to have to plan ahead a few days, so here is the rough break down.

• Defrost the belly if you have to, in the fridge.
• Cure the pork, 24 hours.
• Remove, rinse and dry the pork. Dust with white pepper and place on a rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Place in a roasting pan with the braising ingredients, cook for 8 hours at 120ºC.
• Sometime during that 8 hours make some cavatelli, which is about half an hours work.
• Remove and rest for half an hour, uncovered.
• Cook cavatelli and remove excess fat from the braising liquid, taste and season, combine.

So as you can see not really a whole lot of work, mostly down time, but it’s 56 hour investment of time, totally worth it I promise.

Ingredients
Pork belly, 2kg or so
Pepperoni
Bottle of red wine
Tomatoes, 2 cans crushed
White pepper
Cure mix

Cure mix
1 Part Sugar
1 Part Salt
Chilli powder
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Bay leaf powder


Weigh the pork and work out what 2.5% of the total weight is, that is the weight of sugar and salt to use.


Score the pork deeply to the meat, rub the cure mix in and transfer to a zip lock bag, refrigerate for 24 hours, try to flip it once or twice during that time.


Remove the pork from the bag and rinse, pat dry, coat in white pepper and place on a rack on a pan. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours.

Time to cook!

Place the pork in a roasting dish. Dice the whole pepperoni and scatter around, add in the tomatoes and the whole bottle of wine, I used a tasty Shiraz. Place the tray into an oven preheated at 120ºC. Set a timer for 8 hours and forget about it.


Well apart from the cavatelli you need to make. Just follow the recipe on this page, I subbed out roasted rye for wholemeal flour but rye would be pretty awesome here too.


Take the pork out of the oven and very carefully transfer it to a board. Pour the braising liquid into a pot and let it settle for a while, skim off any excessive fat as this will be a sauce, place it over a very low flame to keep warm.


Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cavatelli, drain and stir through the sauce, keep warm.
By now the pork should have rested for 30–45 minutes. Slice into thick slabs, cutting along the scores, serve with a generous spoon of cavatelli.

Orecchiette with broken pork sausage

With winter comes comfort food, the down side of the desire for warming rich flavours is time, usually the comfort comes from rich unctuous stews and slow cooks, sure you can cheat with a pressure cooker and little tricks, but it’s not quite the same. Thankfully there are a few dishes that really fulfil that winter rich dish feel and don’t take hours to prepare, there is risotto or other creamy rice dishes, always a crowd pleaser, or you can get really quick and indulgent with the dish pictured above, a simple pasta dish that packs a unctuous punch and is deep in flavour.

There are only a few ingredients in this dish, the main one being sausages, it’s important to spend that little bit extra and get good quality ones with high meat content, sausages shouldn’t be viewed as cheap or budget, unless we’re talking about cocktail wieners then I say cheaper the better. The sausage is also a good place to inject a bit of extra flavour into the dish, I used some good quality pork with fennel with great success, don’t be afraid to experiment.

Pasta is another quick way to change up the dish easily, my go to dried pasta for this is the little ears of orecchiette or shells of conchiglie, if I’m feeling particularly virtuous or ambitious for a throw together meal I’d make the orecchiette myself or make a batch of roasted rye cavatelli, but all and all dried pasta is good, it’s easy, and that’s what this is meant to be, a quick and easy throw together that packs a punch of flavour.

Ingredients
Pasta
3 Sausages, removed from casing.
Basil, handful of leaves sliced
Red onion, thinly sliced
Cream
Garlic, crushed
Chilli flakes, optional

Get a pot of heavily salted water on the to boil, and I mean really get it salty, we want the pasta seasoned well. Cook the pasta according to the packet minus a minute.

Put a heavy based pan on a medium high heat, and break the sausage meat in to the pan while still heating, as the pan heats it will help release the fat from the force meat, leave it to brown, resist the temptation to stir, I like it to sit until it has a nice brown crust and then break it up.

When the meat is thoroughly browned, with crisp crunchy bits and is almost cooked add in the crushed garlic clove, and chilli flakes. When the garlic is cooked, lower the heat and add in a good splash of cream, about 150ml, add most of the basil and stir through. Let it cook for a couple of minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

The pasta should be cooked by now, so strain and dump into the sauce, give it a good stir through and cook for the remaining minute.

Serve with a grate of sharp cheese, garnished with the reserved basil and thinly sliced onion.

Sopressa puttanesca

This is one of those get it all into the pot and let it see to itself for a couple of hours, fats and oils mingling together, textures softening, flavours intensifying. When you’ve finally had enough torture and can’t hack the mouth watering aromas filling the house, you just need to give a final adjustment to the seasoning, get it off the heat and devour, spaghetti is fine if you can’t be bothered with the gnocchi, but the fluffy pillows of potato really do lend themselves well to this sauce.

Sopressa puttanesca
Olive oil
Olives, stoned
Chilli flakes, to taste
Garlic, diced
Capers, rinsed
Sopressa, grated!
Capsicum, diced
Red onion, diced
Tomatoes, 1 can
Cider vinegar

• Get a generous glug of olive oil in a heavy pan over a medium heat, add a bit more, put in the grated sopressa and gently let it come up to temperature and release it’s oils.
• When it’s all sizzling away add in the garlic, onion and capsicum, cook until translucent.
• Splash in a little vinegar, and cook out.
• Add the chilli, capers, olives and tomatoes, cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook for a hour or two.
• Adjust the seasoning, salt, chilli, vinegar, and let cook out for a few more minutes before double checking.

Gnocchi
60g potato flakes (1 cup)
300 ml water
1 egg
4 g salt

• Mix well, transfer to ziplock bag and let rest for at least half an hour.
• Get a large pot of salted water on to boil.
• Nip of the corner of the bag and use scissors or a knife to cut of portions as you pipe into the water.
• Cook until floating on the surface and transfer to an ice bath.

Getting it all together

• When ready to serve, get a sauté pan on a medium heat with a glug of olive oil and a knob of butter.
• Sauté the gnocchi until beginning to crisp, ladle in some sauce and toss through, repeat until enough sauce is added.
• Serve in bowls with a generous grating of hard cheese.

Beurre Monté and cavatelli

Well I could wax lyrical about cavatelli, yet again, and perhaps bore you all to death with yet another combination of flours, toasted grains and instant potato flakes, but not today, yes this ultimately ended up as a pasta dish, a cavatelli dish, but it’s not so much the pasta as it is the sauce, in fact I ended up trying this out on two different versions of cavatelli, popcorn grits variety, that had been languishing in the freezer, as a tester, and then the finished dish with roasted rye cavatelli, both good combinations.

The sauce, and the excuse for more pasta, was heavily influenced (read, copied and modified) from Ideas in food’s bullet proof beurre monté and their later post bean monté. I had for a while wanted to have to make this extravagant sauce, with guests coming I had an excuse, plans started forming.

The great thing about the sauce and the cavatelli is they can both be prepared the day before, if not two, so it makes for a much easier cooking experience when guests are due, and heck you can even cook out the cavatelli on the day and shock it in an ice bath then refrigerate until needed, sautéing it until warm through and crisp on the edges. With the sauce, unlike a traditional beurre monté, it can be cooled down and reheated without the fear of it splitting.


Beurre Monté
250g Water*
225g Butter, cut into 1cm cubes and fridge cold.
0.7125g (0.15%) Xanthan Gum
2.375g (0.5%) Salt

• Place the water and salt in a pot over a medium heat.
• When at a simmer, use a stick/immersion blender to mix in the xanthan gum, blend on high speed for about 30 seconds.
• With the blender still running, start adding the butter a cube at a time, letting each piece melt and emulsify, continue until the butter is all incorporated and the sauce thickened.
• Taste, adjust salt if necessary.
• Transfer to a container, allow to cool and refrigerate until needed.

*I used water that I had cooked a batch of whole rye in, and then infused it with thyme and rosemary.


Infused oil
Over a low heat, infuse a large amount of rosemary leaves and half a dozen or so garlic cloves in about half a cup of olive oil and half a cup of canola oil. Let it bubble and warm through on the heat for about 15 minutes, then remove and cover, letting it sit for a further 15 minutes to extract all possible essential oils from the wood herb. Strain and transfer to a glass jar. Keep in the fridge until all used up.

Putting it together
Place a sauté pan over a medium heat and add a splash of the infused oil, when hot, add a sprigs worth of rosemary leaves and let them sizzle. Add the cooked, drained cavatelli to the pan and sauté until just crisp, and if chilled, warmed through. Reduce the heat to low, add enough of the beurre monté to coat the cavatelli and toss until warmed through. Plate up, finish with a smothering of finely grated sharp hard cheese and a few turns of black pepper. 

Popcorn cavatelli

Popcorn cavatelli tossed in a little butter and garlic with, radish greens, shallots and thyme flour.

Well I was planning on moving away from cavatelli with this idea, but as I got making the dough it was just too fragile to be shaped in the way I wanted, so I adapted and bought out the trusty gnocchi board and got rolling cavatelli. I’ve pretty much posted about how to make cavatelli dough before and how to make cavatelli dough from polenta, and perhaps after this post I should take a break from posting every damn pasta idea I have, but it's been a quiet week in the kitchen. You’re going to have to forgive the lack of exact measurements, it will all depend on the amount of popcorn grits you produce and how much water is in the purée, so below is a guide but feel free to add a little extra semolina or flour to help bring the dough together.

Popcorn Grits
Follow this recipe, and then transfer to the fridge overnight.

Popcorn Cavatelli
2 parts popcorn grits purée
1 part flour
1 part fine semolina
1% salt

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Knead to form a ball of dough.

• Wrap tightly in cling-film and rest in the fridge for an hour.
• Divide the dough into four.
• Take one portion and cover the remainder.
• Using your hands, roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.

• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Hold the gnocchi board at an angle and place a segment on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.
• Arrange competed cavatelli on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Repeat with remaining dough.

Cooking

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for 4–5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.

Polenta Cavatelli

There has definitely been an abundance of pasta, particularly cavatelli, recipes appearing on this blog lately, I am a little obsessed. Maybe it’s how easy fresh pasta is to throw together, or that you can customise, tweak and adjust it to your hearts content, probably a little bit of both. I have had polenta pasta on my mind for a while and have been trying to think it through before delving in head first and possibly wasting perfectly good product. After having some success with masa cavatelli it seemed like the perfect vehicle for polenta, I still had a couple of issues to resolve, polenta takes a while to cook through and what was going to bind the dough together, I didn’t want to rely on wheat flour for structure as I did with the masa. I settled on the idea of precooking the majority of the polenta, letting it set and then making a purée out of it, that would be the base of my dough, uncooked polenta and fine semolina were used to bring the purée together as a dough, I think if I used 100% polenta the cavatelli would be a wee bit dense.


I think I’ve mentioned it before but making too much cavatelli is never a problem, it freezes extremely well and can be cooked from the frozen, just allow a couple more minutes cooking time. The quantities below should be enough for four portions, so any unused raw cavatelli can be arranged on a sheet pan and placed in the freezer until solid and then transferred to a zip-lock bag for more permanent storage.


Polenta Purée
1 part polenta (50g)
5 parts water (250g)

• Place a rack or trivet on the bottom of a pressure cooker.
• Pour in an inch of water.
• Pour the ingredients into a heatproof bowl that will fit in the cooker.
• Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes.
• Allow the pressure to drop naturally.
• Remove the cooked polenta and when cool transfer to the fridge. Best left overnight.
• Purée the cooled cooked polenta, I used a fine mouli but a food processor is probably easier, I just don’t own one.

Polenta Cavatelli
2 parts polenta purée (250g)
1 part polenta (125g)
1 part fine semolina (125g)
2% salt (10g)

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Knead to form a ball of dough, add a splash of water if you need to.
• Wrap tightly in cling-film and rest in the fridge for an hour.
• Divide the dough into four.
• Take one portion and cover the remainder.
• Using your hands, roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.
• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Hold the gnocchi board at an angle and place a segment on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.
• Arrange competed cavatelli on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Repeat with remaining dough.

Cooking

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for 4–5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.

Sauce (for 2 portions)
Large knob of butter
2 large garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
2 tomatoes, skinned, de-seeded and finely diced
1 Lemon, juice and zest
Parsley, finely chopped
2-3 handfuls of rocket (arugula)

• Before the pasta goes in the water get a sauté pan on a medium heat.
• Melt the butter gently in the pan, add the garlic just as the pasta is going in the water.
• Gently sauté the garlic, you don’t want any colour, just cook out the rawness.
• Add the tomatoes and cook until they start to break down.
• Add a tablespoon or two of the pasta water, swirling and stirring through. The starch in the water will help emulsify the sauce and keep it from splitting. Keep adding water and cooking down until you have a nice thick sauce, probably about a third of a cup in total.
• Just before the pasta is cooked, taste the sauce, add half the lemon juice and zest, adjust the seasoning with salt. Taste and decide if you need the rest of the lemon juice, you may not.
• Scoop the cavatelli into the sauté pan and toss through the sauce, add the parsley and rocket, toss through and cook for 30–60 seconds more, just enough to wilt the rocket.

Serve with some good sharp hard cheese grated generously over top.

Spiced masa cavatelli

Well I have had a bag of masa in the pantry for a while, I have been using it, making tostada (a crispy fried flat tortilla topped with tasty things), regular tortillas (I even bought a tortilla press) and not least of all tamale. So I guess it’s a little odd my first post about masa is a pasta, there is more than enough information online regarding making the more traditional items and I’m not sure I’ve got much to add to the subject, yet.

This pasta came about due to the fact I had a container full of braised beef leftover from tortillas the previous night and a desire not have a meal rerun. When possible I try to re-purpose leftovers, it’s far too depressing to eat the same thing night after night. The usual suspects ran through my mind while trying to think of something new to do, nachos, tostada, enchilada, quesadilla, the apple not really falling far from the tree as far as ideas go. Still on my pasta making buzz, much to the chagrin of the better half, I mean I make it and eat it a lot, heck if it’s not pasta at the moment, it’s spicy noodle soups. Anyway, I had this idea of pasta nachos, make a pasta that can handle a good sauté to crisp up a bit and take a good thick braise based sauce. I thought of gnocchi and maybe revisiting the potato chip version, but I figured it would probably be best to keep on topic flavour wise so nixed that idea, masa and tortillas still banging about in my head I got to thinking if I could use it to make pasta, I couldn’t think why not, and cavatelli seemed like the perfect choice. I only wish I had a blowtorch (with a Searzall) in the house, I mean it’s the one gadget I’m lacking, but it would have been great to have the pasta tossed in the sauce, plated, topped with cheese and hit with a hot flame to really bubble and crisp up before garnishing.


Spiced masa cavatelli
100g instant masa
170g fine semolina
100g flour
280g salted water (265ml water +15g salt)
10g spice mix*

*In a spice mill, blend equal quantities of annatto, coriander seeds, and cayenne to a fine powder.

• Mix the dry ingredients together and form a well in the centre.
• Pour in the salt water and work the flour in to form a dough ball.
• Knead until smooth, about 8 minutes.
• Wrap tightly in cling film and let it rest on the bench 30 minutes.
• Divide the dough into four.
• Take one portion and cover the remainder.
• Using your hands, roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.
• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Hold the gnocchi board at an angle and place a segment on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.
• Arrange competed cavatelli on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Repeat with remaining dough.
• Store the tray of pasta at room temp until ready to cook. Alternatively place the tray in the freezer, when frozen solid transfer the pasta to a zip lock bag. The pasta can be cooked straight from frozen.

Cooking

• Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for about 5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.
• Sauté in a hot pan with butter to give a crisp exterior.
• Toss through a sauce and serve.

Potato Chip Gnocchi

These gnocchi use instant potato flakes in place of a baked potato, which means you can manipulate the flakes and moisture levels quite easily. I toasted the flakes in a hot oven until golden brown and smelling more than a little reminiscent of a bag of potato chips.

The sauce I served was a pretty simple broken sausage, thyme, shallots and some passata, dressed with a little cheese, parsley, sweet corn and radish slices.

60 g potato flakes (1 cup)
250 g boiling water (1 cup)
1 egg
6 g smoked salt
150 g flour (1 cup)

• Spread out the potato flakes on a sheet pan and bake at 180ºC for 5 minutes, they should be golden brown and will burn pretty quickly, so keep an eye on them.
• Transfer the flakes and salt to a bowl and pour on the boiling water, stir through and cover. Let it stand for 5–10 minutes.
• Mix the egg through.
• Add the flour and bring together into a ball of dough, do not overwork the dough.
• Wrap in cling-film and rest in the fridge for half an hour.

• Divide the dough into four, gently roll a portion of the dough into a log about the width of your thumb.
• Use a sharp knife and cut into 1cm slices.

• The dough pretty fragile and easily mashed, use either a fork or gnocchi board and roll it down the ridges. Place on a tray dusted with semolina flour. Repeat with the remaining dough.
• Poach in salted boiling water for a couple of minutes, they should float to the top when cooked. Toss through some sauce and devour.

A couple of toasted pastas

I’ve been a on a bit of a pasta buzz recently having recently received Flour+Water in the mail, the kitchen draws have become a bit more stuffed, a gnocchi board, different lengths of dowel, cavatelli machine, pasta roller (I finally replaced the hell beast that shredded my hands), fluted cutter, a new hand cranked pasta extruder too, all essential tools, well that's what I tell the wife. I’ve really enjoyed being introduced to a decent recipe for semolina pasta dough, I can now whip up a batch of orecchiette or cavatelli in no time flat, there’s something cathartic about working your way through a batch of dough rolling it down the ridges of a gnocchi board with your thumb or scraping little dough pieces with a bread knife and turning inside out over your thumb to make orecchiette.

The catalyst for the addition of many length of dowel to the kitchen supplies was the purchase of the gnocchi board and coming across the recipe for garganelli, it was rather fortuitous that the day after reading the recipe we happened to be in the vicinity of a hardware store with the ideas of purchasing some home improvement bits and bobs, many a dowel was bought and childish excitement about making pasta ensued, I mean I pester my other half with “Have you seen the pasta, it’s so cool!”, “Yeah I saw it on instagram”, “Well you haven’t seen it person!!!” I say as I grab the tray of dried pasta and shove it in her general vicinity “Cool huh”. It’s probably quite worrying I get so excited over the perfectly formed cavatelli rolling off the board, or that I’ve figured out a better way to roll, it is probably the reason I instagram so much.

By the way, if you want a really decent cast iron pan for not very much, like less than half of what a certain person is selling them for, Mitre 10 and Moore Wilson's stock Lodge pans, as I found out after I imported mine from the US, thankfully for about the same price.

The garganelli was inspired from Flour+Water, farro was used in the original, I was fresh out so opted for rye and it turned out excellent. The second pasta, cavatelli is my adaptation of the semolina dough used for orecchiette with the addition of roasted rye.


Roasted Rye Flour
Roast rye berries in a dry pan until deep brown and almost smoking, be careful not to burn. Transfer to a bowl and once cool grind in a spice grinder.


Garganelli served with crispy chicken thigh confit and garden vegetables.

Roasted Rye Garganelli
90 g Toasted Rye Flour
300 g Egg yolk
270 g Flour (00 if you have it)
Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Tip in the egg yolks and slowly work the flour in. Once a dough ball has formed tip out on the bench and knead for about 8 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Cover tightly in cling film and let it rest for 30 minutes, if you’re not going to roll the pasta in half an hour, refrigerate.

Take quarter of the dough, keep the remainder covered, and run through a pasta machine until you reach the thinnest setting (1.5mm). Use a ruler or straight edge and roller cutter to slice the rolled dough into squares (about 3 cm squared).


Place a square diagonally on a gnocchi board so a point is at the top (closest to you), place a dowel (5~8 mm diameter) just below this top point and bring it up over the dowel. Roll the dowel down the board, use a bit of pressure so the dough sticks to itself but not so much the grooves cut the pasta. Place the completed garganelli on a sheet pan sprinkled with semolina.

Leave to dry at room temperature until you’re ready to cook. Cook in boiling salted water for 2–3 minutes.


Served with Pumpkin seed pesto, asparagus, celery-parsley salad and malt pickled red onion.

Roasted Rye Cavatelli
50 g Toasted Rye Flour
180 g Semolina
130 g Flour
178 g Salted water (168 g Warm water with 10 g Salt Dissolved in it)

Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the water and slowly work the flour in. Once a dough ball has formed tip out on the bench and knead for about 8 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Cover tightly in cling film and let it rest for 30 minutes, if you’re not going to roll the pasta in half an hour, refrigerate.

Cut off about quarter of the dough, cover the remainder. Using your hands roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick. Cut into 1cm segments. Hold the gnocchi board in one hand at an angle and place a piece on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.

Pumpkin Seed Pesto
Lemon, juice and rind
Garlic, puréed
Pumpkin Seeds, roasted and ground
Olive oil
Salt

Cavatelli with poached chicken

As one does, I spend a bit of down time trawling through ebay seeing what bargains can be had, and quite often have to forcefully tell myself that no I do not need vintage Mello Yello crown caps, even if my home brew bottles would look awesome, but every now and then I just can't help myself, especially when it’s a gnocchi board for less that $5 and free shipping, it’s a must purchase if you want to hand roll cavatelli, which ever since the machines purchase I have wanted to have a go on a proper wooden gnocchi board. Well, order placed, I had hopes that it’d turn up before I left on holiday, in fact I had a few packages I hoped wouldn’t be sitting on the doorstep for a week while I was away, maybe I have an online shopping problem.


Cavatelli
180g flour
180g fine semolina
168g warm water
10g salt

• Dissolve salt in water.
• Mix flour and semolina together.
• Form a well and pour in water.
• Mix together and knead for 10 minutes.
• Cover tightly with cling film and rest at room temp for 30min.
• Cut off about quarter of the dough, cover the remainder.
• Using your hands roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.
• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Place a piece on the top edge of a gnocchi board
• Push down with your index finger across the board and drag with pressure towards the bottom, it should curl over itself. (Kind of like stroking the length of the board with the flat of your index finger with some pressure)

Chicken poached in stock with peas, thyme, pulled apart.

Peas from the poaching liquid passed through a mouli to purée and remove the skins, then with an immersion blender, olive oil and cider vinegar are emulsified into the purée. Seasoned with a little Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Transferred to a little piping cone made from parchment paper.

The poaching liquid is topped up with enough water to boil the cavatelli, cook for 5 minutes.

Asparagus sliced in half, sautéed in pan then finished with pasta stock to poach. Fresh garden peas tossed in at the last second to warm through.

The pasta is tossed with some of the cooking liquid, chicken, fresh peas, asparagus and olive oil, seasoned, arranged on a plate, the pea “mayo” piped on, and finished with a little grated parmesan.

Orecchiette

I’ve been quite excited about getting the Flour+Water cookbook, I even pre-ordered it, something I don’t do that often, the book is beautifully put together, full of stunning photographs, and very well written with easy to follow recipes. Their instagram feed is a must follow. The Orecchiette below is from the book (not verbatim) and the sauce my own, more of a I really really want to make Orecchiette, get another pasta method under my belt, and I have leftover roast chicken thighs that were going to become a rye berry salad but transitioned quite easily to a nice stocky sauce.

Sauce
Leftover chicken meat shredded, thighs and drum
1/2 carrot very finely diced
1/2 red onion finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp parsley and oregano, finely diced
1 cup chicken stock, infused with thyme and chilli
1 tsp cider vinegar
Chard, leaves finely sliced and stalks finely diced
1 tbsp butter
75~100 ml pasta water
Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Sauté chicken until crisp and golden around the edges, toss in the carrot, onion and chard stalks, cook until translucent, add the garlic and deglaze with cider vinegar. Add the chard leaves and chicken stock, simmer until reduced by half. Put the pasta onto cook, and after about a minute add a ladleful of the pasta cooking water and swirl in the butter, don't stir. Taste and season.1 minute later (2 minutes total) add the 80% cooked pasta and toss, finish cooking it in the sauce. Stir in the herbs, cook for 30 seconds more. Double check seasoning. Serve up with shavings of parmesan.


Orecchiette
180g flour
180g fine semolina
168g warm water
10g salt

• Dissolve salt in water.
• Mix flour and semolina together.
• Form a well and pour in water.
• Mix together and knead for 10 minutes.
• Cover tightly with cling film and rest at room temp for 30min.
• Cut off about quarter of the dough, cover the remainder.
• Using your hands roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.
• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Use a butter knife and push down on the far edge of a piece and pull towards yourself, so the dough curls over.
• Uncurl over your thumb and turn inside out to form a dome.
• Place completed Orecchiette on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Leave to air dry at room temp until you’re ready to cook.
• Boil in well salted water for about 2 minutes, and then another minute in the above sauce.

Ricotta Cavatelli

I’m becoming quite addicted to the Google Keep App, it’s a large tile of post-it like notes or lists that you can access via a web page or phone/tablet app. I find it handy for jotting down ingredients or ideas, partial and full, and the obvious shopping lists and being able to tick off as you go. This started out as one of those little post-its, “artichokes, pine-nuts and sultanas”, I had that down and wanted to do something with it. I happened to have a tub of Zany Zeus ricotta in the fridge and a desire to revisit cavatelli, so again much consternation about finding some consistency across recipes for ricotta cavatelli I ended up forming what I thought would be a good ratio and set to work.

I did happen to mention the cavatelli accompaniments to my other half, and much like any savoury with a fruit addition her nose screwed up and indignantly told me in no uncertain words that she would not be having that for dinner, so she got a garlic-bacon-tomato sauce that was whipped up.


Ricotta Cavatelli
200g Flour
200g Ricotta
1 egg
5g salt

• Mix the flour and salt together and form a well.
• Add the ricotta and egg.
• Use the back of a fork to mash the egg and ricotta together, slowly working into the flour.
• Use your hands and form into a ball.
• Knead for about 5 minutes, until nice and smooth.
• Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for half an hour.
• Roll out the dough on a well floured bench and cut into strips ready for the cavatelli machine.
• I floured the machine, and on top of the roller so a bit of flour gets sprinkled over the dough with each turn.
• Pinch the dough and run through the machine.
• Toss in flour to keep the cavatelli separated until you’re ready to cook.
• Shake off any excess flour and cook in well salted boiling water for 3–5 minutes.

For the pictured dish:

• Soak sultanas in a hot liquid
• Toast pine-nuts
• Quarter cooked artichoke hearts
• Pick some pea-shoots
• Zest and juice lemon
• Finely chop some parsley, dill would be nice too
• Sauté the artichokes in a little olive oil and butter until they begin to caramelize.
• Toss in the lemon zest, sultanas and pine-nuts.
• Stir in some butter and toss through.
• Taste and season with lemon juice and salt (I’m totally obsessed with smoked salt at the moment).
• Add the parsley and cooked cavatelli, toss together.
• Dish up and garnish with the pea-sprouts.

Bacon-tomato sauce
2 rashers of bacon
1 can of good tomatoes
1 onion
3 big garlic cloves
cider vinegar
salt
chilli flakes

In a pot over a medium heat, sauté the chopped onion and whole garlic cloves, when soft add the chopped bacon, cook until the bacon has rendered most of the fat but not coloured too much, add a splash of cider vinegar, add the tomatoes and a pinch of chilli, cover and turn the heat down, cook for about 20 minutes. The onions and garlic should be very soft, purée the sauce with a stick blender, taste and season with salt and adjust the acidity with vinegar. Simmer until the desired consistency is reached. Toss cooked cavatelli through the sauce.

Cavatelli with beef

After completely busting my pasta machine, fingers and sense of humour when making alkaline noodles (recipe to come) for a nice tasty bowl of Ramen, I headed online looking to replace the cursed finger shredding hell beast, much to my pleasant surprise they are considerably less expensive than when I first purchased the pile of scrap metal. Ultimately I got completely distracted and ended up buying a Cavatelli machine from Amazon rather than one of the pasta machines from Trade Me, which I should really get around to sometime. Shipping speeds being rather good these days I didn’t have to wait long to get my hands on the machine and start playing. Ratios, recipes and advice is a little hard to find online if you’re not that interested in trying out non-ricotta cavatelli as I was, but after a bit of research, piles of books, and finding a curry cavatelli in Lucky Peach issue #1, I felt comfortable I had a decent basic cavatelli dough (not ricotta or egg pasta).


Little did I know that was just the start of the trouble shooting, making the dough is pretty straight forward, it’s a little like kneading a brick much like making alkaline noodle dough, but by the end it’s pretty pliable and easy to handle. The main cause consternation is getting the strips of dough the right thickness and width to run through the machine, they have to be wide enough to take up most of the roller, but not so wide than when compressed they get caught in the side, and has to be thick enough to be compressed when pulled through so it curls and makes a dense piece of pasta, too thin and it’ll just pass through and the texture is all off. Well I still have a lot of practice to get consistently good cavatelli, but I’m sure it’ll be one of those light-bulb moments when I nail the perfect thickness and width.


Cavatelli
1 Tbsp Olive oil
2 Cups Flour
1/2 cup Hot water
1 tsp Baking powder
Big pinch of salt

Add the flour, salt and baking powder to a bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour in the water and oil. Mix together, and form into a ball. Cover and let sit for 10 minutes to hydrate a bit.

Knead, it will be very stiff and a lot of hard work, after about 5 minutes wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Knead again for about 5 minutes, wrap it and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out and cut into strips ready to roll through the Cavatelli machine.

Once passed through you can freeze in a single layer (and then transfer to container) or cook straight away, in plenty of salted water boil for 4-5 minutes.

Braised Beef
This is a pretty versatile sauce, loosen it with a little of the pasta cooking water before tossing it through the cavatelli. Leftovers are great when reheated with some sautéed cavolo nero.

Stewing beef, cubed
Celeriac, diced
Carrot, diced
Onion, diced
Fennel bulb, diced
Chicken stock
Tomatoes
Bay leaves
Parsley, finely chopped
Mustard
Anchovies
Tabasco
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

Heat a decent glug of olive oil in an oven proof dish and brown the beef all over, add 4 or 5 anchovies, cook until they have melted into the oil. Toss in the onion and fennel, cook until translucent. Add the remaining ingredients, adding enough stock so the liquid is almost covering everything. Place on a lid and cook in a slow oven until falling about, about 130ºC for a few hours.

Spoon out about a third of the sauce, and as much meat as possible, pass the remaining sauce through a mouli, pull the meat apart with a fork, stir everything back together, taste and season.

Take enough sauce for the number of portions, I’m a nerd and usually do a portion at a time, if it needs reheating place in a pan on a medium heat, loosen with some pasta water and toss the cavatelli through the sauce, serve up. To add a little extra dress with a little lemon-chilli oil* and parsley.

*Lemon-chilli oil: 1 part peppery olive oil, 1 part lemon juice, chilli flakes, and salt.

Pressure cooked meat sauce

This is one for the pressure cooker club, if you’re not a member I guess you could slow cook it, but it’s really not the same, there is something about cooking under pressure and using next to no added liquid that really pumps up the flavours in the sauce. If you’re on the fence about owning a pressure cooker and have heard nothing but horror stories, the days of exploding pots of hell are well and truly over, the modern pressure cooker is quite unlikely to erupt, and heck you can even get set and forget electric models which are great for freeing up a hob and not adding to the heat in the kitchen, not a bonus on a cold day though.

Melt in the mouth beef nestles into the indentations of the orecchiette pasta, giving an almost perfect ratio of meat/sauce/pasta with each mouthful. It’s definitely my go to quick and easy sauce. It’ll make you think twice about cooking up a batch of mince based sauce again, primal cuts give better flavour and texture, you get to control the fat going in, and as it’s slow/pressure cooked it breaks down to melt in the mouth tender pieces.


500 g Chuck steak, cubed
2 Onions, diced
200 g Tomato purée
1 Carrot, diced
1 Bulb of garlic, peeled
Handful of parsley, chopped
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp Tomato paste
Salt
Pepper
Hot sauce, to taste, or chilli flakes

It's dead simple, put everything into the pressure cooker and cook on high pressure for about 40 minutes. Let the pressure drop naturally. Use a wooden spoon to break up any lumps of meat. Taste and season with salt, pepper and white wine vinegar. Stir in another handful of chopped parsley. Serve stirred through orecchiette.

Mac and Cheese Sliders

Mac and Cheese isn’t really considered healthy, and well it is pretty much starch with starch with cheese, so not really helping out with the 5+ a day vegetable intake that is recommended. So why not gild the lily and coat patties of Mac & Cheese in some tasty potato starch (instant mash potato), fry the little cheese pasta goodness and slide it into a soft bun with some hot sauce and lettuce. Why not indeed, a total carb overload, bread, pasta, flour based sauce, not at all bad for you, well not your taste buds anyway.

Macaroni
Cook to the packets instructions, I prefer the small elbow to the large. Take care not to overcook. Strain and dump into a large bowl. I think I used about 300 grams of pasta.

Streaky bacon
Slice up into little lardons and place in a hot oven until the fat has started to render out and crisp up around the edges, don’t make it too crispy otherwise you’ll have little bacon bullets in your pasta. Tip the bacon, fat and all, on top of the strained pasta and stir through.

Cheese Sauce
750 ml milk (whole milk please)
Parsley
Bay Leaf
Thyme
Peppercorns
Onion (peeled and quartered)

Place all of the ingredients in a pot and put over a low heat, allow it to gently simmer for ten minutes or so, be careful not to scald the milk. Strain into a jug for easy pouring.

Over a medium heat melt 3 tablespoons of butter and then stir in 3 heaped tablespoons of flour, stir until the flour has cooked through, make sure not to colour the roux too much. Pour in a portion of the milk and whisk until it has incorporated and begins to thicken, repeat until all of the milk is incorporated. Cook until thick, stirring often. If the white sauce is lumpy, don’t worry just keep stirring and cooking, the starch in the flour will eventually hydrate and the the sauce will become smooth.

Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in an egg, and two cups of cheese, I like to use a combination of strong flavourful cheese and good melting cheese.


Pour the cheese sauce into the bowl with the pasta and stir through making sure it is evenly coated, taste and season as needed.

Now you can spoon this into a baking dish, top with some crumbs and cook in a hot oven for about half an hour and you’ll have some tasty mac & cheese, or you could wait for it to cool and transfer it to some containers and place in the fridge. When the mix has set and is completely cold remove from the fridge and spoon into ring molds, pressing down with the back of a spoon to make little slider patties, carefully coat each patty in potato starch (instant potatoes).


Heat a good amount of oil in a heavy based frying pan and cook the patties until they are golden brown on each side, you could probably deep fry if you wish but I find shallow frying works perfectly well. Allow the patties to drain on some kitchen towels and serve in a slider bun with shredded iceberg lettuce and hot sauce.