20 minute recipes - Leek & Stilton Carbonara

Oh, hello there.

How are you? How's your mother? Yes, it's getting a bit nippy out, isn't it? Little bit parky, yes. Getting dark early. Still, soon be Christmas, eh?

Better than going out in the cold

Anyway, someone pointed out to me recently that I haven't actually posted a recipe for absolutelyfuckingages so here's something new I've been working on for the Winter season.


A warming and hearty pasta sauce that's quick and easy to make; sort of Italian with an Anglo-Welsh twist.

Perfect comfort food for an evening in. After all, you don't want to go outside, do you?

And, yes, I'll try to post recipes more often. I know you like them.

Leek & Stilton Carbonara

Ingredients: (makes enough sauce to coat four generous portions of pasta)

Pancetta cubes (or Guanicale if you can get it), about 1/3 lb
Leeks, 2-3, topped and tailed
Stilton, about 1/4 lb, crumbled
Garlic, 2-3 cloves, finely diced
White Wine, about 2 glasses

It's cheesy...

Butter, a very large knob, as it were 
Single cream, about 1/4 pint
Olive oil, a little for frying

To serve:

Tagliatelle, or other fresh pasta of your choice

Black pepper
Fresh Parmesan


Method:

Set a pan on a medium-high heat, and fry off the pancetta and garlic in a little oil for 4-5 minutes while finely slicing the leeks - it's best to use a high-sided saute pan if you're going to be making a decent quantity of sauce.

...and, err, Leeky

Add the leeks and cook for a few more minutes until they soften and start to disintegrate, before turning down the heat a bit. Whack in the crumbled Stilton and a little butter, and stir it about as the cheese melts and begins to coat the meat and leeks.

Pour in the wine a little at a time - if the cheese starts to burn or turn brown, the temperature is too high. It's also perfectly acceptable to add more butter at this point. Because we like butter.

Leave it to simmer for a few minutes while you cook your pasta, but, importantly don't add the cream until a couple of minutes before you're ready to serve.

Almost done!

Once you've added the cream, stir it in, and maybe turn up the heat a notch - you're looking for a consistency that is deliciously creamy but not too thick as it's got to coat the pasta easily.

With plenty of already-salty ingredients in the mix, you shouldn't need to add any further seasoning, but tasting the sauce will do no harm.

Finally add your cooked, drained pasta, ensure it's all well coated and serve right away with a healthy sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper and a little parmesan.

An Italian White will go well with this

Ben Appetit!

Food fit for Commoners

You probably haven't failed to notice that there's an Election coming up this week.

Who are you voting for?

Actually, if you live round here, you might very well have failed to notice. In this ultra-safe Labour seat they could, and often do, stick a red rosette on a steaming dogturd and it would still romp home with a huge majority, so nobody is bothering to make much of an effort.
 

As far as the wider electoral picture goes I shall, of course, be rooting for the Tories and hoping for the best, but I'm not at all confident now. We're almost certainly heading for abject constitutional carnage for various regrettable reasons that I won't go into here - I'm well aware that the stuff that fascinates politicos like myself is more of a turn-off to most people than the sight and aroma of a steaming dogturd with a red rosette on it.

Anyway, one of the advantages of an Election campaign is that the house isn't sitting, and that means that ordinary folk like you and I get a rare opportunity to see a bit more of the innards of our parliament than we normally would.

Places like the Members' Dining Room, which I visited last week, fulfilling a long-held wish.

A fucked-up breakfast for a fucked-up Britain

What's Black, Blue and Green?

The flag of Tanzania, perhaps? Nope, that's got a little bit of yellow on it.

A martian that's been savagely beaten?

How about a martian that's been beaten up whilst shrouded in the Tanzanian flag, but has excreted a viscous black-bluey-green bile all over the yellow bits of the flag, thus concealing them?

Is this all sounding completely fucking idiotic? Maybe a bit disturbing? Good.

Actually, it's no more disturbing than a couple of surveys I noticed in this morning's Metro.

Do they have Vanuatuan takeaways in El Salvador?

I remarked the other day that it was almost impossible to find food that identified as 'United Arab Emiratean' in Dubai. (Which is in the United Arab Emirates if you needed reminding!)

This got me thinking.

Think, think, think went my brain, like some sort of vast, organic thinking machine.

And I came to the conclusion that this criticism is possibly a bit harsh, if only because the UAE is far from alone in having a dismally flaccid presence in the World League of Food.

Want to know what I'm banging on about? Hold tight for some Gastro-geopolitical discourse.

The official meal of Euro 2012?

The thing about Euro 2012 - and indeed many other major sporting events - is that you get used to having at least one match to watch every day.

Today is the first day with no game since the tournament started, and I feel at a bit of a loss, even though it's only one day without football and the Quarter-Finals begin tomorrow.

Cattle of Waterloo - Browns vs Rouge

What do you lie awake at night wondering about?

(If indeed, you lie awake at night wondering about anything at all, obviously)

Perhaps you're a City tosser worrying that the FTSE is losing billions of pence at the expense of the Franc, whatever that means?


Perhaps you wonder whatever happened to Ringos crisps or the original entrance to the Louvre?

Or maybe you're just extremely curious about which mid-high-level 'smart-cas' chain restaurant does the best steaks: Is it the classic quintessentially English Browns or the cheeky French pretender Café Rouge?

I rather hope it's the latter, actually, because I've been doing a little research in this area by eating steaks at both places in the last week.