The View from the Spaghetti Factory

Continuing a train of thought from the previous Dinnerlog post, it occurs to me that I don’t really know all that much about cooking off by heart. All those groovy, glossy celebrity cookbooks provide instant gratification without any deeper understanding of why the ingredients fit together… your only investment of time is the trip to the supermarket and the actual preparation. Yep, and I’m guilty on that count.

But still, as I mentioned before, I like the idea of knowing recipes off by heart, and then, through familiarity, having the confidence to play around with them. I also quite like the idea of having at least one instant solution for each major ingredient… sometimes you happen to be wandering through Croydon market just before 4pm and a wily trader persuades you to take that entire *box* of something-or-other off his hands for a quid or two, and then you get it home and think “so what the hell do we make with this?”… that’s what I’m talking about.

We got some fennel bulbs last week. I really love fennel, but I was bored of stewing it in stock or vermouth or eating it raw in a salad. I tried a recipe in our Anna del Conte book where you slice it, sauté it in butter, stew it in milk and then stir in cream and parmesan… very nice, but the milk always curdled and burned slightly, affecting both taste and texture.

As an experiment, I tried a little variation. Quarter and thinly slice the fennel bulbs and sauté in butter for a few minutes. Add just enough stock to cover and simmer until soft. Mash partially, stir in a dollop of creme fraiche and bloody hell, it works! Far less sickly than the cream/parmesan version, although I could imagine parmesan working in this version, too.

Sometimes, things I like coincide with other things I like. A coincidence of pleasantness.

I like eating and I like summer weather, so it was nice to end Sunday with the first al fresco dinner of the year, and Tuscan-style broad beans and ham seemed an appropriately sunny choice for the fine weather. Everyone should know how to make this… it’s one of those “ultimate comfort foods” that seem to account for most of the recipes I’ve committed to memory.

All you do is chop an onion and fry it slowly in olive oil with a handful of chopped parsley and the ham, which would be about 400g of prosciutto crudo if you’re doing it properly. Fry that together until the onions are squidgy and then add about 150ml of white wine and a couple of kilos (pre-shelled weight) of broad beans. Salt and pepper, cover and cook 20 mins and you’re done.

Familiarity with an old favourite means you can easily make adjustments to suit your needs. I find parsley a bit too bland unless it’s in huge quantities, so we used a handful of sage from the garden… it seems to add a flavour that seems more typically “Tuscan” to me. And I didn’t fancy blowing quite so much money on Parma ham, so we got one of those mini gammon joints from M&S and pre-roasted it (which would be prosciutto cotto, presumably). Damn good, anyway… especially when accompanied with some Jersey Royals coated in buttery sorrel mush and the rest of the wine.