Lasagna!

Lasagna 1, originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg.

What do you do when you have fresh lasagne pasta, tinned tomatoes, minced beef, ricotta, parmesan and mozzarella in your larder? How about making... lasagne!! So we did.

I made the meat sauce and the béchamel, chopped the tinned tomatoes very finely (alright, I used the food processor!) and flavoured it with onion and garlic (sautéed in olive oil) oregano, thyme, a bay leaf and salt and ground pepper. This cooked on a low heat (covered, for about an hour), until the oil separated from the juices from the vegetables. I tasted the sauce for seasoning and then assembled the lasagne in an oiled lasagne pan.

But not before we discussed the best sequence of layers! We finally decided on: pasta, meat sauce, béchamel, and cheese...pasta , meat sauce béchamel and cheese... ending with cheese.

The whole thing went in a 180˚C oven for about 40 minutes - until the dish looked toasted and browned on top. We took it out of the oven and let it rest on the stove-top while we prepared the salad and dressing.

It was lovely. We'll be cooking this again!

Eat. Love. Laugh. Live.

Cauliflower Gratin

Cauliflower gratin 2, originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg.

I'm not too sure where the inspiration for this dish came from - could it have been inspired by the *two* heads of organic-box cauliflower that seemed to be conspiring to ambush us at the first opportunity? I don't really know for sure... but I do know that we were very, very aware of that cauliflower and constantly of interesting ways to prepare them.

Finally, Friday evening (Good Friday, in fact) presented the perfect opportunity - we were well-rested and refreshed having had a long lie-in and, towards the end of a mellow, relaxed day, we were wanting something relatively simple yet rich, warming and interesting to eat. Cauliflower gratin seemed the perfect thing - once we'd established that we had everything we needed to make it, in the store-cupboard, of course. Best of all (at least for me!) we had rigatoni - my current favourite pasta - in the cupboard!

So we set about preparing the various components of the dish I had in mind - We prepared the béchamel, the cheeses (grated cheddar and emmanthal). Once ready, everything except the pasta was put in a gratin dish and baked in a 180˚C oven for approximately 45 minutes (until the crust was well-browned). Ten minutes or so before the gratin was ready to come out of the oven we cooked the rigatoni, as per the directions on the packet.

Once cooked, the pasta was served with generous lashings of sauce and cauliflower spooned over the top. Absolutely *devine*... rich... decadent, almost!

Be generous with the sauce...

Calamari and Linguine

Calamari and Linguine, originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg.

The weariness that we feel at the end of a long week spent working and keeping the cats happy is no excuse not to cook a really great meal to celebrate the beginning of the weekend!

This afternoon I sneaked off to Market Square to do some shopping for the weekend: First stop - the fishmonger. Stephen Wright's stall is our first stop for really fresh and delicious fish in Cambridge. Recently, too, they've been undergoing something of a renaissance; the range of fish on offer has expanded and the fish seems even fresher and more delectable than it has been in the past (if that is indeed possible!) As the week before, I found myself almost overwhelmed by the rich variety of seafood on offer - in weeks to come I shall list some of them here...)

I eyed the fish and chose a beautiful wild bream for Saturday and a huge, incredibly fresh-looking squid for this evening.

Squid is an easy meal from my point of view - I only really know one way to cook it:

Squid and Linguini

First, clean the squid and slice it into thin rings.

Then, finely chop 4 cloves of garlic and a handful of flat leaf parsley and set them aside.

Heat a large pot of water to cook your pasta (we recommend linguine or buccatini). Cook your pasta before you cook the calamari and drain it while it is al dente. Chill it down with cold water before you begin cooking your squid.

Heat an iron skillet 'til very hot and add 4 tbsp olive oil, heat until nearly smoking and immediately add the chopped garlic and the calamari rings.

Stir-fry these, briskly and when the calamari start releasing their fluid, continue to stir fry until about half of the fluid has been absorbed (about 1 minute longer).

Add 150 mls of dry white wine and salt and pepper to the pan.

Stir fry for a further 2 minute then add 1tbsp butter to the calamari, and a handful of chopped parsley.

Stir and fry for an additional 1 minute. Check seasonings and....

Serve!

Rigatoni Bolognese

Rigatoni Bolognese
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

Tonight we had left-overs. Bolognese over rigatoni - my current favourite pasta! It had been a long day and I was in no mood to cook - in fact, I was going to msg Steve that we should skip the whole 'dinner at home' thing altogether and give ourselves over to the convenience of eating out. Alas, I ran out of energy and enthusiasm to do even that! So I resigned myself to the tender mercies of whatever was in the fridge at home.

Ah! But I reckoned without recall of an earlier conversation with Steve, only the day before - we'd planned to savage the left-overs of the bolognese from last week. No sooner had I got home than Steve arrived and our plan was reconstituted. Talk about 'easy' - this was... well, easy! I tweaked the sauce a bit (okay, quite a bit - I just can't help it, honest!) and Steve boiled water and timed the rigatoni perfectly. I made dressing and we had a simple green salad to go with the meal.

Delicious and comforting. Mmmmm.

More later... Cook. Eat.

xx