Macaroni Cheese

I actually made this on Saturday night, but I forgot about it until today. I made spaghetti bolognaise this evening because I was cooking for 7 (we have guests) so I didn't want to be stuck in the kitchen all night making something overly complicated.  I am now so full of spaghetti I can't move from my sofa and everytime I walk around the house shakes like godzilla is in the building. not cool.

We visited the Doges Palace yesterday, but only actually looked at half of it as the Doge's apartments were shut. Afterwards we were so hungry we stopped for ice cream at Il Penguino (our favourite ice cream parlour) and I had a reaaaaaaaally good fig ice cream. Highly recommend any fig based foods. Mum made fig and goats cheese tart yesterday - a la Howard from Bake off and it looked fab.

Ingredients for Macaroni Cheese:
1 Packet Macaroni/Penne
1 Large Tub Mascarpone Cheese
3 Large Hundfuls of Parmesan Cheese
2 Balls Mozzarella
2 Handfuls of Breadcrumbs
Salt & Pepper

Melt the Mascarpone in a pan with 2 handfuls of Parmesan and the 2 balls of mozzarella. Simmer on a low heat until melted. Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

While melting the cheese, boil a pan of water with a bit of salt and cook the pasta until its al dente. Drain the pasta and stir into the cheese sauce. Put the cheesy pasta into a baking dish cover with breadcrumbs and the remaining parmesan and bake on 200C for 10 minutes or until the breadcrumbs are golden and crisp.

I served this with some courgettes and tomatoes which I sautéed in a little balsamic vinegar and oregano.

What cheese should you use to hide a small horse?

Marscapone 

Hahah

Mask a Pony...

Chicken Wrapped In Prosciutto

There is a shortage of goats cheese!!!

As you may have guessed, I like cheese, any cheese, except Stilton. So when browsing the daily mail for gossip on Robin Thicke's new excuse for blurred lines (like the song but I really don't think its about his wife) I was horrified to see that lots of European goats are being culled because of some disease (I was too upset to read the whole article but I assume its a goat version of foot and mouth). Anyway, this means that there is a shortage of goats cheese and the cost of any left over is about to rise significantly. I spend too much money on cheese as it is, so this is not good news and I'm not happy about it. I'm getting my mum to stock pile it because I refuse to be without a staple cheese at Christmas.

Anyway enough about goats cheese, this meal is one of my old recipes in fact it was the first thing I ever cooked for my boyfriend - Matt, although it had cheese sauce not garlic butter (trying to fatten him up)

Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 Chicken Breasts
1 Ball Mozzarella (Sliced into 8 Pieces)
8 Slices of Prosciutto
50g Butter
2 Cloves Garlic (Finely Chopped)
4 Large Potatoes
Splash of Milk
200g Spinach

Butterfly the chicken breasts (slice down the middle without cutting in half) and fill each with 2 slices of mozzarella. Place each chicken breast on top of two slices of prosciutto and roll up to form a cylinder shape. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes on 200C.

While the chicken is cooking, peel and slice the potatoes, and boil the, until cooked thoroughly in a pan of salted water. Once cooked mash them with a splash of milk until smooth.

Melt the butter with the chopped garlic on a low heat, while doing this pan fry the spinach in a tiny bit of butter until wilted. Then serve!

It's a dish that you can make look really presentable but really it's super easy to make. I'm now making a tarte tatin to take my mind off the goats cheese dilemma and in preparation for watching The Great British Bake Off tomorrow. No spoilers please!

Minestrone Soup

Spent a long day at uni today, after not being able to come up with a decent excuse, I had to do my shift as a librarian this morning. This was not ideal as I bruised my bum climbing on lion statues on Friday night and the chairs in the library do not come equipped with cushions. This dinner took less than half an hour to make so perfect for a stressful day being surrounded by books that I'm never going to read.

I made enough for about 8 but soup freezes well so it will keep.

Ingredients:
2 Red Peppers (Chopped)
2 Large Courgettes (Diced)
1 Pack Mini Pasta (Still haven't worked out what they are called)
3 Jars Passata
150ml Water
1 Onion (Diced)
Handful Fresh Basil
Tbsp Tomato Purée
Salt & Pepper

Soften the onions, pepper and courgettes in a little oil. Add the water, passata and tomato purée and simmer for a few minutes. Add the cute pasta and a pinch of salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the fresh basil and serve.

Serve with crusty bread and butter and that's it. Easy peasy.

Emily and I had ours early as we were too hungry to wait for the girls to get back from their stalking/ italian class (they followed a strange man from italian and ended up going the wrong way). I now have to read a book about Venetian renaissance art before tomorrow, not expecting my evening to be much fun - also I watched Downton Abbey and I'm feeling a little depressed, I won't give away any spoilers though.

Also saw a really cute puppy on my walk to the shop to buy some crisps, it looked like a husky crossed with a tiger - and it was chasing pigeons! CUTE.

Savoury Pancakes

As I am writing this, I am feeling a little fragile. Drank a little too much and got lost on the walk home from the bar last night. Not sure we will ever really know where we are going here in Venice - everything looks the same, although once I handed the map over to someone else we found our way much easier, so maybe its just my rubbish semse of direction. Anyway, last night we had pancakes for dinner, savoury ones of course, couldn't possibly have nutella pancakes as a main meal...

This recipe is an adaptation from a recipe introduced to me by my friend Martina - it takes quite a while to make but it is well worth it.

Ingredients for the pancakes (This is a basic recipe I got from BBC food as I don't have any scales I just guessed):

110g plain flour - sifted
pinch of salt
2 eggs
200ml milk combined with 75ml of water

Put the flour in a large mixing bowl and crack the eggs into the flour. Whisk together with the salt whilst adding the milk and water slowly. To cook the pancakes, heat a frying pan with a little butter and spoon 2-3 ladles of the pancake batter into the pan, let the pancake brown on both sides (you can attempt to flip them if you're feeling brave) and once done transfer onto a plate with a sheet of kitchen roll on the bottom. Repeat until you have at least 8 pancakes that are relatively thick - pile them all up on a plate with a sheet of kitchen roll in between each one. Leave to cool.

Ingredients for the filling:

1 Pack Lardons/ 5 Rashers Bacon (Sliced)
250g Mushrooms (Chopped)
250g Spinach
3 Handfuls Parmesan
50ml Dry White Wine
1 Onion (Chopped)

Fry the onions and bacon in a little olive oil, once browned add the wine and simmer on a medium heat until the wine has reduced by half. Add the mushrooms and the spinach and 2 handfuls of the parmesan and leave to simmer for 5-7 minutes until the spinach has wilted. Next spoon 2 dessert spoons of the filling on to the middle of a pancake and fold the sides over to make a square. Repeat this step until you have 8 filled pancakes and place them all on a baking tray. Sprinkle the last handful of parmesan over the top of the pancakes and bake in the oven for 15 minutes on 180C.

I usually add pine nuts to this recipe but I can't find any anywhere! I'm sure pine nuts are used in pesto and other italian things but I can seem to get my hands on any!

Pizza & Pasta 'Carbonara'

We had pizza for dinner last night, not quite as good as a real one from the pizzeria we live above, but on a budget it will do. Its easy to buy ready made pizza dough, as you could imagine in Italy but at home you can buy packets of dough mix that you just add water to. Then just top the dough with passata or tomato purée and then whatever else you want! We had one with mozzarella with parma ham, fresh spinach & parmesan. The other had mushrooms and mozzarella. We definitely could have eaten one each, but I don't have the oven space, so we had cornflakes covered in nutella for pudding while watching Great British Bake Off.

This evening we had my own variation on pasta carbonara. By no means the traditional recipe (no egg and extra chorizo) this one came about when I had my own ready steady cook challenge one week when there was not a lot of food in the fridge back home.

Serves 4
Ingredients:
1 Onion (Finely Chopped)
2 Garlic Cloves (Finely Chopped)
1 Pack Lardons/ 4 rashers Bacon (Sliced)
100g Chorizo (Diced)
Handful Parsley (Finely Chopped)
3 Tbsp Philadelphia/ Cream Cheese
1 Large Handful Parmesan (Grated)
1 Packet Pasta (Any Type)
Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

Place a pan of salted water on to boil. Once boiled, add the pasta and cook for 15 minutes.

Fry the onions and garlic in a little oil and add the chorizo and lardons. Once cooked thoroughly, add the cream cheese and the parmesan with 5 tbsp of boiling water (use the water for the pasta). Stir together and leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and half of the chopped parsley. Once the pasta is cooked, drain and stir into the sauce. Top with the remaining parsley and serve with grated parmesan on the side.

We ate a whole pack of pasta again today - but we had a two hour seminar - more time than is usually expected from a history student, so we had to treat ourselves.
 

Giant Salad & Bruschetta

I'm not strict with my diet at all, my biggest weakness is my ability to justify eating more food. Like ordering a cheese board as well as a dessert because I can never decide on what I want, or having a second ice cream after a long-ish walk back from uni, so I'm surprised at myself for choosing to make a salad for dinner. Don't worry though, this salad isn't just rabbit food, but its a salad so it must be healthy...

Serves 4

Ingredients:

750g Mixed Salad Leaves

150g Cherry Tomatoes (Sliced in half)

2 Small Cucumbers (Peeled if Necessary and Sliced)

1 Large Carrot (Grated)

Half a Baguette (Diced - For Croutons)

1 Pack Lardons

Handful Sun-dried Tomatoes 

1 Ball Mozzarella 

Olive Oil, White Wine Vinegar, Salt & Pepper

Fry the lardons until they start getting crispy on the edges, once done empty them onto some kitchen roll to soak up the excess fat and leave to cool. In the same pan, gently fry the baguette pieces in a little oil until they start to crisp up, once done, leave them to cool on the kitchen roll as well.

To make the dressing mix 7 tbsp of olive oil with 5 tbsp white wine vinegar in a bowl, add a pinch of salt and pepper. You can add a spoon of Dijon or Wholegrain  mustard to the dressing to add a little more of a kick, but I didn't have any.  

Wash the salad leaves and place them in a large serving dish with the cucumber, tomatoes (fresh and dried ones), cooked lardons and croutons and mix together with the dressing. Top the bowl with the grated carrot and rip up the mozzarella and sprinkle over the top. You could also throw in some toasted pine nuts to the salad if you wanted, although I couldn't find any in the supermarket. This makes a lot of salad, but if you're having this as a evening meal, you do need a fair amount to fill you up. If you wanted to make this as an accompaniment I would use half of the ingredients and perhaps leave out the croutons.  

I also made Bruschetta for lunch today, with the left over bread from the croutons. Slice the bread and toast under the grill. Top with finely sliced tomatoes and a little chopped onion. Season with a little glug of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and a little fresh basil. Yum.






In other news, I see dogs walking around all the time here and I feel like I may end up involved in a dog napping soon. I spoke to Tigs (my puppy) on skype the other day but she was just confused, she is an Irish Setter and unfortunately confusion only comes too naturally to her. I definitely miss her the most (sorry Mum), she comes in handy in the kitchen as well - she is my own personal hoover, my flatmates certainly are not as keen to eat off the floor.

Spaghetti Bolognese

My Dad makes the best spag bol in the world, although in our house its called spag bog (no idea why). I don't know what he puts in it that makes it so tasty, but it always tastes amazing. I made my version last night, it didn't hold a candle to Dad's but it was still nice. In my flat, we aren't big meat eaters but I have to sneak it into our diet somehow so I filled my bolognese with bacon and carrots to disguise the meat. I'm also a huge passata fan (don't think I'll ever buy a can of chopped tomatoes again) and this totally changes the sauce, makes it taste a lot more fresh and 'tomatoey'.

Serves 4-5
Ingredients:
1 500g Pack Lean Beef Mince
1 Onion (Diced)
1 Packet Lardons
1 Large Jar Passata
1 tbsp Tomato Purée
3 Small Carrots (Diced)
2 Cloves Garlic (Finely Chopped)
1 Packet Spaghetti
Salt, Pepper, Oregano & Olive Oil

Soften the onions and garlic in a little oil. Add the mince in small chunks, if you buy lean mince you shouldn't get too much fat, but drain away any excess. Add the lardons and fry on a low heat until mince is completely brown and the lardons are cooked. Add the passata, tomato purée, pinch of salt, pepper and a little oregano (or fresh basil if you prefer) and leave to simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes. Put a large pan of salted water on the hob to heat.

After leaving the meat sauce to simmer for 15 minutes, add the carrots and leave for a further 15 - 20 minutes on a low heat so it doesn't burn. Once the water has boiled, add the packet of spaghetti - make sure it is totally submerged and leave to cook for 10-15 minutes until cooked.

I served the spaghetti bolognese with salad, home-made garlic bread (a baguette sliced with a little garlic butter spread on each slice) and of course, lashings of parmesan.
In Casa Bamford, we have different names for portion sizes created by Dad:

The Ballerina - Tiny Portion
The Allegro - Medium Portion
The Largo - Large Portion
The Wild Pig Loose In The Strawberries - No explanation needed right?

Well, the portion below is definitely a wild pig sized plateful (was bigger than it looks) and I had seconds...