Rich and Austere

When early in the day offered the choice of an evening meal based on bangers and mash with onion gravy, or pasta with meatballs (made of the defrosted sausages) SC chose the latter. I wanted to do something different - see Serendipity and the Death of Creation - so ended up making Pasticcio. And bloody lovely it was too.

Thanks to the divine HFW for the basic recipe, though I have eaten this before (in Greece rather than Italy as might be expected), and made it a year or so back.

It was a great example of really good food not costing a fortune: meatballs were made from the meat taken out of £2 of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference sausages; £1 packet of salami; two cloves of garlic, an egg, shallot and some Parmesan. Two 35p tins of toms and some onions, a carrot plus herbs from the garden and more garlic made a rich tomato sauce; 70p of milk and butter plus pennies of flour (and some onion, herbs and a bit of carrot for the infusion) made a bechamel. Two thirds of a 90p pack of penne provided the pasta.

What it did cost was the time I was happy to give it, breaking up my writing for magazines, and what it could have cost had we not possessed a dishwasher was my marriage. Pan for infusing milk for bechamel. Pan for bechamel. Pan for tomato sauce. Griddle for tiny meat balls. Huge pan for assembling the lot: al dente pasta pre-mixed with bechamel on the bottom, tomato sauce with meatballs in the middle, another layer of pasta and bechamel, then a load of cheese (end of some cheddar, about 75p of Parmesan, and a 55p basics mozarella.

Tot all that up and it comes to about £7.00, quite a bit for a midweek supper. But there was enough to feed at least six people, eight if they were polite. Except it was so good three of us demolished the lot. I will do it again without leaving it a year, same quantities, but to feed friends as well as us - as it looked great too which is important when being hospitable. I was glad that I did it in the wide pan with just those three layers, rather than building up what sounds like seven in HFW's recipe - everybody loves cooked cheese and that gave us plenty.

Creative Austerity

Is it possible to be both creative and economical? Stupid bloody question really, as some of the world's great dishes are peasant in their roots, and thus made using the simplest ingredients. The mushroom lasagna I cooked the other night was not exactly simple, but it was economical, and it was the tastiest thing I have put on the table in months.

Mushrooms in place of a meaty ragu was an idea I'd been mulling over for a while, partly because I've committed to doing more vegetarian dishes. An interview with a vegetarian chef (she was making Christmas dinner lasagna) was another spur. Even plain button mushrooms are moist enough to help with cooking the pasta, a nice protein boost, and both cheaper and healthier than using beef. 

The milk for the bechamel was flavoured as ever with onion, carrot, pepper and herbs - bay, thyme and sage - so was packed with flavour already. I made the sauce, though, with about 50g of Stilton. Blue cheese goes well with mushrooms, and this made the sauce - stiff as behoves bechamel for lasagna - really special. 

The market-bought 'shrooms were just sliced and sweated in vegetable oil (plus a teeny bit of truffle oil from a bottle someone kindly bought for us last Christmas), then the lasagna was layered sauce, pasta, sauce, fungi, grated cheddar, pasta, sauce, fungi, cheddar, pasta, sauce, grated Parmesan. 

It cooked to cheesy brownness in 40 minutes at 180 Celsius, filling the bottom two floors of the house with appetite-inducing aromas, within which the few drops of truffle-oil played a surprisingly big role. Ruth was out at a leaving do (plenty of those at the university currently), but SC and I, having already prepared a plea in mitigation with a tomato and cucumber salad, finished all bar a mouthful, both of us tempted to seconds and thirds.  

Back-of-the-envelope calculations make the cost well under £3, and it was good enough and solid enough (unlike my ragu version) to have graced at least a gastro-pub table, if not somewhere more upmarket. It would have fed four with ease too. 

So yes, sometimes you can be creative and economical. Long-winded answer really. 

The Vital Ingredient

If there is a secret society dedicated to rewarding the makers of superb lasagne I am in for a major windfall. I've not heard about such a group, but if it's secret I wouldn't have. Last night's effort was per Sternest Critic, not easily pleased in such matters, a personal best. And the ingredient that made it so was time.

I can make a lasagne from scratch in an hour, 40 minutes of that time being what it spends in the oven. But then the meat ragu has not had time for the flavours to cook down and blend, and the bechamel is not going to be bechamel but a plain white sauce.

Yesterday's schedule gave me free time in the middle of the day, when I prepared the milk for the sauce, heating it with a quartered onion, bay leaves pepper and nutmeg, plus chunks of carrot and celery, then leaving the lot to infuse for another four hours. After basic browning the ragu was simmered for about 45 minutes to dry it out - one recent version of the dish was more soup than solid - and again left for the flavours to mix and mature.

Time is clearly something in short supply for many - working from/at home and my own boss (if Ruth says so) I'm lucky - but surely not so rare that the vile Just Eat (fast food dross) campaign can be excused? Is it over the top to suggest our society is doomed if the fast-foodsters win? Yes. But still.

My conscience pricks me: there was another vital ingredient in the probably-not-award-winning lasagne, about 150g of cheese. Cheese in the bechamel, cheese on top of the meat layers, and a thick layer of finely grated parmesan on the top that came out of the oven at the Goldilocks moment.

Onions and Le Creuset - Both Bargains

We had our annual bonfire do last night, feeding I think 19 in all. The biggest culinary hit was a simple accompaniment to a big bit of plain boiled gammon, onions in a cheesy bechamel. The idea was lifted from Nigel Slater, though I think his version was without cheese. I love the breadth of his ideas, and his frequent focus on things other than meat, but can't abide his writing style as it has evolved over the last few books. Still, he is probably not worried given I have at least five of his tomes.

The dish was made by peeling medium-sized onions and cooking them in boiling water for about 25 minutes, then halving them, placing them like little domes in two Le Creuset cast iron oval dishes, and covering them in a bechamel sauce before finishing in the oven for half an hour at 180C, by which time the surface was starting to brown and bubble.

Milk for the bechamel was infused in the morning (thinking ahead as it was a party) with onion, carrot, bay and nutmeg, and the sauce made in the usual way, on the thin side as the cheese then added would give it extra body anyhow. At the end of the evening there was some gammon left, about half the pate (too much bacon in it, a sin Elizabeth David railed against), but not a scrap of cheesy onion (nor a single sausage, that standby of the bonfire party). Sternest critic rightly said later that the onion was a touch watery, so I'd probably cook them for just 15 minutes in future and rely on the oven to finish them off.

Ten onions cost about £0.75, the milk and cheese maybe £1, so it was a cheap and tasty success, a bargain. As were those Le Creuset dishes about 25 years ago. Good cookware lasts, and helps the cook. I have two sets of pans, one stainless steel, the other LC cast iron, both bought in the late 1980s, and both pretty forgiving of wavering attention. They cost quite a bit back then, but had we chosen cheapo options with thin bases and delicate lids they'd have died at best three years later, and would have burned half the things cooked in them.

Biggest firework hit btw was Molten Madness from Sainsbury's, brought by a friend. It was roughly the size and weight of a fridge, and effectively laid down an artillery barrage for five minutes. Le Creuset Soup Pot with Lid, 2-3/4 quart - Cherry (Google Affiliate Ad)

And Even More Bloody Courgettes

Though the title of this post suggests otherwise, we're still grateful for the continued cropping of our allotment courgettes. And I'm still trying to find different ways to use them. With four tennis-ball sized Ronde de Nice fruits in the fridge needing to be used I tried a take on moussaka last night.

The bechamel was made properly too, milk heated with various flavouring veg, bay leaves and nutmeg, then left to steep for several hours. It makes all the difference, that pasty flour taste you can get hidden away behind more interesting stuff. A fairly dry ragu made with beef mince was then layered with the very thinly sliced courgettes and the sauce, ending with a thick layer of sauce topped with plenty of Parmesan. Even though the ragu was pretty dry the end result was on the sloppy side, but the taste got the thumbs up (with the proviso from my son that he still prefers lassagne if there's a choice).

That Parmesan from the press trip to Parma is still keeping perfectly (wrapped in clingfilm in the fridge), and still bears an occasional sly sniff - the technique of breaking a lump beneath the nose as demonstrated by Igino Morini during the dairy visit maximising the aroma.