A coffee-based pasta sauce may take a leap of faith for some, but I have to stress – don’t think you’ll be eating a bowl of coffee. I first encountered coffee in a savoury dish when I was cooking with my mentor in Florence. We made pasta from scratch which was infused with strong, fresh … Continue reading COFFEE, MUSHROOM & HAZELNUT LINGUINE
Let’s discuss carbonara’s traditional recipe while advocating for personal adaptations. Yes, we’re respecting culinary roots but I do encourages creativity for the sake of individual taste, ultimately presenting a modified carbonara recipe to bring into your own home. Continue reading SPAGHETTI CARBONARA
The simplest pasta dishes are often the best. Think cacio e pepe, think carbonara, think amatriciana, think gricia. Simple dishes, delivered to the mouth via the gorge vehicle that is pasta. Thank you pasta. Not that I’m placing this recipe in the same canon as the Four Pastas of Rome, but what I’m saying is … Continue reading SUNDRIED TOMATO & ANCHOVY PASTA
Do you ever just thank God for the Ziplock bag? I do. I do it all the time. Food that’s waiting for you in the fridge, from the seasoned depths of a Ziplock bag, means that something phenomenal is coming to the table and there’s very little work left to do once that bag is … Continue reading PICKLED LEMON, OLIVE & TOMATO CHICKEN BAKE WITH ORZO
Everybody’s got a lasagne recipe Even the shakiest of kitchen-phobes somewhere in the depths of their culinary cranium, have a lasagne recipe. I often hear people who aren’t the most confident of cooks, punctuate their anti-kitchen confessions with ‘But I do make a good lasagne!’ And I’m not mad at this. I think so long … Continue reading A REALLY RELIABLE LASAGNE
The thread of Nigella is strong here. There’s a slight web of inspiration happening with this recipe that meets somewhere in between Nigella’s Italian inspired cookbook, Nigellissima (2012) and Simply Nigella (2015) with a little added layover in Jack Monroe’s Tin Can Cook (2019) which, in true culinary respect, is the definition of a fusion … Continue reading SPICY MACKEREL LINGUINE WITH SUMAC & GARLIC BUTTER
A ragù is emotional. I’ve always found, after many years of cooking, that a ragù/ meat sauce, is deeply personal to everybody that cooks it. Even people who hate cooking/ don’t cook will always say to me that they make ‘a good bolognese’ or ‘a good lasagne’, and while this makes me happy, because I’d … Continue reading BEEF & ‘NDUJA RAGÙ
There is a scenic recipe route for cooking meatballs. Lavish, sepia toned landscape affairs of frying onions, soaking cuts of bread in milk, cracking eggs, grating garlic, combining two bricks of ground beef and sausage and then a laborious amount of dexterity. This isn’t that recipe. If that recipe is hiking the Himalayas to meatballs, … Continue reading QUICK MEATBALLS & SPICY PEPPER SAUCE
Nigel Slater, who I consider to be somewhat of a paternal figure to me in the kitchen, once said, ‘Whatever the xenophobic meat-‘n’-two-veggists say, pasta is now our national dish. The family no longer unites over a joint of beef. It unites over a bowl of pasta’. I’m sure the meat-‘n’-two-veggists reading this will be … Continue reading CRUSHED PEA, PRESERVED LEMON & PISTACHIO PASTA
Mussels are just that thing, aren’t they? One of those things that look like a hell of a lot more posh than they actually are. Yet people are still infinitely frightened of them. Those that like cooking think they’re hard to cook and those that hate themselves hate the way they taste. How can you … Continue reading VERMOUTH & GARLIC BUTTER MUSSELS
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 