Last week I held a little competition on Ciaran's Kitchen page, on facebook, so that I could give some of my delectable Baileys Truffles out to people who kindly support me. Simply put, when the page reach 80 "likes"(it had 59 then and over 100 now) the first person to write "I want my truffles" on the wall were sent a sample of truffles. As a surprise for the 80th person a sample of truffles were also sent. With making up a new batch to send to them, cooking breakfast Saturday morning for a dear friend of mine; french toast with goats cheese, crispy bacon and maple syrup, sausage and herb scrambled egg with freshly brewed coffee, what a great way to start the weekend :) I digress, so whilst packing up and sending out the truffles to my competition winners I also sent another package with my delightful Baileys Truffles to the manager of a trend bar in Soho, who, I learnt while I was down there having a great the other week, was introducing a "tea room" at the weekends and was looking for someone to cater them with an array of sweet desserts. I had left my Edesia Caterers business card for him with the staff member who had told me about this but thought what better way than to follow up by sending him a sample of my treats - and really? what better treats are there but Truffles!? So off they went with a cover letter and ...... fingers crossed :)
With all the hustle and bustle of the weekend's goings on - I was also treated to a dance show at Saddler's Wells, a love story through the sensual form of Tango :) - Monday's dinner was again last thing on my mind! Admittedly, it amused me. I'm sure there was some subconscious part of my mind which kept me from doing my weekly shop on Saturday so I would be faced with the challenge of a bare kitchen again. But how bare, I really was not prepared for!!
So picture with me, if you will, for a moment. Walk into my kitchen. On the kitchen table sits a large glass fruit bowl, in it are 3 perfectly ripe bananas, 4 red juicy apples, oh roughly 8 sticks of crunch celery, 1 large firm carrot, a red hot chilli and a couple cloves of garlic. In my fridge, as much to my surprise as to your shock were 1pt semi skimmed milk (for my weetabix in the morning), 2 pts of full fat milk (for cooking), 2 onions, some nutty chestnut mushrooms, half a red pepper (that most probably should go into the compost bin), a good few juice tomatoes, 2 trays of eggs, a few packs of butter and different cheeses ..... oh and 4 Actimel (my all important friendly bacteria :) ). oh and one more thing, sausages! SAUSAGES!!!!! oh good lord! what has become of me .........
Well, in my defence, the sausages I had bought from the local butcher in readiness for making breakfast for my dear friend on Saturday. A dear friend who rocked up to my door after only getting 4hrs sleep. Breakfast started, just to put some perspective on this, at the very decent hour of 10am (it was Saturday after all)
So there I was, stumped. If I wanted to make an English breakfast (for dinner granted) I was missing ingredients, if I wanted to make a bolognese ... well I had celery, the carrot, garlic and I suppose the tomatoes but erm .... what's a bolognese with out the beef!! Oh mama would turn in her grave with the thought of it!! (that's no reference to my mother of course, who is thankfully alive and well - she even posted a comment on my blog recently, which really touched the cockles of my heart). However, the thought of something Italian, maybe pasta, all of a sudden really appealed. Now I know it's not exactly summer food but let's be honest here, we create these labels like "summer food", on the assumption that we have summer weather!! Yeah, well mother natures playing funny games with us here at the moment and I wanted something warm and hearthy to go with her joke.
Out came the tomatoes, the mushrooms, garlic, an onion, the chili, olive oil, butter and the Sausages!! That wasn't too difficult, pasta with chilli tomato sauce and sausage, perfect!! Now where's my pasta? hmmm, none in the cupboard!! ah, but there is the spaghetti jar but on closer inspection it was a spaghetti jar alright and only a spaghetti jar! There was no spaghetti left in it! How could this happen?! Running out of dry goods didn't even happen during the blitz for goodness sake!! Well, I was left with the option of going down to the local shop or going hell for leather and making the pasta myself. Something crazy inside me said "make it yourself". Not that making pasta is crazy by any means however when a man is hungry a man is hungry and as any of my close friends will tell you this rule is magnified when it comes to me. Grumpy is generally the word used when I get hungry. But I was going to persevere. I had the eggs and the flour so after I quick but thorough clean down of the counter the process began.
For the pasta - this makes enough for 2
200g of plan strong flour
2 eggs
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sift flour into bowl. Make a well in the centre and put the eggs and oil in it
Using 1 hand gradually mix the eggs, oil and flour by drawing in the flour from the side of the well until a stiff dough has formed
Place dough on clean surface and kneed dough until smooth and elastic, roughly around 15 mins. When done, wrap dough in cling film and leave aside in a cool place for 1 hour
After an hour tear dough into small pieces and roll each one out until paper-thin. It is very important that you get the dough as thin as possible.
With a sharp knife cut the rolled out dough into long strips, go for the tagliatelle style
Let strips dry for at least 30 minutes before cooking.
In a large pot of boiling salted water cook the fresh pasta until al dente
For the chilli tomato sausage sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
knob of butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
6 mushrooms, sliced
500g of fresh tomatoes - skin off* and chopped, which is roughly 6/7 plum tomatoes (if using tinned tomatoes change quantity to 400g)
4 sausages, cut into thick slices
*To take the skin off the tomatoes, place them into a saucepan of boiling water, sing happy birthday really quickly or give them 10 seconds, then plunge into cold water - cut into quarters and easily peel the skin off.
Heat the oil and butter in a large pan over medium heat
Add the onions, fry for 10 mins until soft and golden
Add the sausages, fry for 5 mins until lightly browned
Add mushrooms, fry for 3 minutes
Add the chopped tomatoes, chilli and garlic
Bring to the boil and season with salt and pepper
Reduce heat and allow to simmer for 30 minutes
Pour the sauce over the pasta, mix in some chopped parsley and serve with grated Parmesan.
Yummy!! Home made pasta with sausage and chilli tomato sauce
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