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.
Showing posts with label pasticcio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pasticcio. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Monday, 14 January 2013
Good Filla for Good Fellas
We are in culinary winter mode, the threat of a chance that there may possibly be the potential for snow ("Britain Doomed to Snowy Hell" - The Daily Wail) meaning we stoked up the multi-fuel stove, lit a rare fire in the living room (in the fireplace rather than just generally somewhere in the room) and have been upping the solidity of our evening meal. Tonight's was particularly robust, a simplified version of pasticcio.
The simplification only came in the layering - instead of the cookbook version that cut through resembles a sedimentary cliff face this was just penne and cheesy bechamel, tomato sauce and meatballs, penne and bechamel and a good layer of cheese on top.
This was another Monday night supper inspired by Sunday's roast, a way of using some of the remaining beef rib in the meatballs, and doing a bit more fridge clearance with three uncooked pork sausages that were disdained on Sunday morning, and about a third of a pack of 'recipe' bacon (another third became the stuffing served at the same Sunday afternoon meal). Hugh F-W was the source of the idea. In matters of meat I tend to refer to his books, which mix sound sense, culinary knowledge, and environmental awareness. It was he too who called pasticcio Mafia food.
How many Monday meals are dictated by the weekend's feasts? The rib of beef was not as extravagant as it sounds, reduced at Waitrose, and I have a feeling the girl behind the butcher's counter made an error, as a hefty 1.7kg two-rib joint only (only) cost £13. Given it did the Sunday roast, today's meatballs, and the rest will make a salad (with the bones destined to become the heart of a stock) or maybe a spicy Chinese soup tomorrow, that is not bad value.
Another spur to making the pasticcio was our new food processor. Toys need playing with. I'm still in mourning for the old one, about to be tipped. It was a present on our engagement, so not far off 30 years old. Fittingly, rather poignantly, it merely seemed to die of old age: no bangs or rattles, no distasteful smell of burning, one minute it was working, the next gone. It would have wanted to go that way. The new one has variable speeds and more attachments than James Bond's cigarette lighter, but I am willing to bet it won't last five years, let alone 30.
The simplification only came in the layering - instead of the cookbook version that cut through resembles a sedimentary cliff face this was just penne and cheesy bechamel, tomato sauce and meatballs, penne and bechamel and a good layer of cheese on top.
This was another Monday night supper inspired by Sunday's roast, a way of using some of the remaining beef rib in the meatballs, and doing a bit more fridge clearance with three uncooked pork sausages that were disdained on Sunday morning, and about a third of a pack of 'recipe' bacon (another third became the stuffing served at the same Sunday afternoon meal). Hugh F-W was the source of the idea. In matters of meat I tend to refer to his books, which mix sound sense, culinary knowledge, and environmental awareness. It was he too who called pasticcio Mafia food.
How many Monday meals are dictated by the weekend's feasts? The rib of beef was not as extravagant as it sounds, reduced at Waitrose, and I have a feeling the girl behind the butcher's counter made an error, as a hefty 1.7kg two-rib joint only (only) cost £13. Given it did the Sunday roast, today's meatballs, and the rest will make a salad (with the bones destined to become the heart of a stock) or maybe a spicy Chinese soup tomorrow, that is not bad value.
Another spur to making the pasticcio was our new food processor. Toys need playing with. I'm still in mourning for the old one, about to be tipped. It was a present on our engagement, so not far off 30 years old. Fittingly, rather poignantly, it merely seemed to die of old age: no bangs or rattles, no distasteful smell of burning, one minute it was working, the next gone. It would have wanted to go that way. The new one has variable speeds and more attachments than James Bond's cigarette lighter, but I am willing to bet it won't last five years, let alone 30.
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