Warm cauliflower salad

I was a little nervous about the vinegar but this was a cracker. A great way to enjoy cauliflower. Next time I'll be putting the vinegar in more liberally. I ate it with the now famous Alice Waters potato gratin (with thyme as something different) and some pan fried chicken.

Fresh Pasta

I made the egg pasta using a pasta machine for the first time. Very pleased with myself. Pretty easy really. I wasn't really sure when it was ready when I cooked it though. It was ok but I think it might have been a little underdone when I was eating it with my special ragu........

Bolognese Meat Sauce

What a disappointment. The famous Hazan ragu. Butcher ground meat. Hours and hours and hours of cooking. I mean, hours. Forget 3 hours, this thing takes at least 4.5, even if you only simmer the sauce for 3. That's a lot of bloody hours.

And I made the bloody pasta. No more perfect union in gastronomy, Marcella says.

Well, not my version. I've had tastier ragu from a talentless housewife in 20 minutes.

Bit depressing really.

No doubt if Marcella made it for me it would be as expected. But she didn't. And it's such a pain in the arse time wise, it's a bit of an effort to try again and again. I'm not sure where to turn.

I might wait until my special tomatoes come in, and then make it again using the son's recipe.

Fricasseed Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon Juice

I consider myself quite proficient at fricasseed chicken, Hazan style. My favourite Hazan dish is fricasseed chicken with olives and cherry tomatoes from Marcella Cucina. Coincidentally, it is also made with rosemary, garlic and white wine, just like this dish.

Marcella's fricasseeing technique is different between her books, and it shows in the results. The garlic is not put in this dish until the chicken is browned, and no reference is made to it when Marcella refers to the next 2-3 minutes of cooking. This cooking surely must be all about the garlic browning, but it doesn't end up browning as much as it does in the olive dish, and as a result the dish is less pronounced from a garlic perspective.

Similarly this dish has a sprig of rosemary, rather than 2 full chopped tablespoons. Rustic perhaps but again less pronounced from a rosemary perspective.

Finally, Marcella does not drain the fat from the olive chicken before it is served. I suspect she drains almost all the fat/wine mixture (or goodness as it is known in some circles) from this dish to due to the low fat insanity of the 1980s/1990s. Marcella was under a lot of pressure at that time from the increasingly large Americans to reduce the fat in her (mediterranean) dishes and she says that was one of the drivers in Essentials.

As a result there is a lot less lemony sauce - which is the star of this little number - than you would like. You really have to poke around to find it. If I made this one again I think I would ignore the detail of the Essentials method and just squeeze a little lemon juice into the sauce (sorry, fat/wine) at the end. This would mean the garlic and rosemary contribute more and there is more goodness to share and mop up with crusty bread in the Italian fashion.

All things considered I don't think I will make this one again though. Not with the siren call of the olives and cherry tomatoes in the background....

Potato soup with smothered onions

After my barbie which included, of course, onions, and the Alice Waters potato gratin I had potatoes and onions I had to deal with.

Hazan had a potato and onion soup that looked just the trick. Not normally something for the hottest day of summer, but with the benefit of air-con it might as well have been the middle of winter.

I'm really beginning to love Marcella's simplicity. True to form, this soup doesn't have much in it other than potato and onions, as well as my hard earned beef both and a little parsley and parmesan.

Heaps of onions really, but they nicely reduced as they did in the smothered onions pasta last night. I'm still learning the colours of onions - gold, dark gold, brown, pale brown for example. But I think I got there in the end.

I was a little worried after the simmering that it was going to be a little bland, but some extra salt and the requested parmesan and parsley sorted it out. A great little winter warmer, even if it is the middle of summer.

Smothered Onions Sauce

I had heard about this recipe, but I was still skeptical. Just onions pretty much. Lots of them. And some white wine and parsley. Doesn't sound like much of a sauce for a pasta.

I was a little worried when I put the onions in the saute pan after slicing. Marcella, I have learned, does not believe in heating fat before putting in other ingredients. This isn't so much of a worry when you can see the fat heat and the garlic sizzle, but in this case butter, olive oil, about a million onions (6 cups) and some salt is put in a pan cold before the fire lit and the lid put on. Then it's hidden and you don't lift the lid for an hour or so, after which the onions are meant to be (and indeed were) soft and sweet. I peeked and stirred a few times. If you don't have a braising saute pan for this it no doubt will end in tears.

I was a little hesitant about the browning at the end. She calls for the onions to be browned until they are a 'deep dark gold'. By this stage they were sweet and delicious and I didn't want to ruin a good thing. I didn't want them to end up like barbeque onions. In the end I just browned them in the sense of them being brown rather than white. I'm not sure if this is a deep dark gold, but they sure tasted good. I think next time I'll try and brown them even more so long as I don't burn them.

Once the wine boiled down and the onions were salted I think this sauce could well have been one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. I know I just said that about the Alice Waters gratin but I'm either easily pleased or on a roll.

Either way, it was damn good. So good I was reluctant to toss it with the pasta, although it did meet my old friend parmesan in the process. I didn't use as much pasta as was suggested because I loved the sauce so much.

So how was it? Well we both gobbled it down pretty fast, and it was declared a winner. This will be cooked again, no doubt. I think next time I'll drizzle some olive oil over the top before serving. Glad to have a pasta that isn't tomato based that is so tasty.

Makes me keen to make the chicken with onions from Marcella's Italian Kitchen.

La Fiorentina - Grilled T-Bone Steak, Florentine Style

This is a simple approach to cooking steak that is perhaps more common now than it was in the 1970s. First, it is cooked once on each side. Second, it is salted on each side. Third, coarsely ground black pepper is rubbed on each side, and perhaps a garlic clove is rubbed over it. I oiled the meat early as I was cooking it in a pan rather than on a grill, which is a bad thing according to Marcella.

But it tasted pretty good to me.

The real hero of the dish though was the Potato Gratin from Alice Waters Art of Simple Food. It had almost nothing in it. No cheese! No cream! Only salt, pepper, milk, potato and dabs of butter. I held grave fears. But it was one of the most delicious things I've ever cooked.

Keep an eye out for Alice.