Nigella Bites (7 page)

for the tomato sauce:

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 tablespoon olive oil (not extra-virgin)

700g bottle tomato passata

pinch of sugar

salt and pepper

100ml full-fat milk

Put the onion, garlic and oregano into the processor and blitz to a pulp. Heat the butter and oil in a deep, wide pan, then scrape the onion-garlic mix into it and cook over low to medium heat for about 10 minutes. Don’t let the mixture catch, just let it become soft. Add the bottle of passata and then half-fill the empty bottle with cold water. Add this to the pan with the pinch of sugar and some salt and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes. The tomato sauce will appear thin at this stage, but don’t worry as it will thicken a little later. Stir in the milk, and then drop the meatballs in one by one. Don’t stir the pan until the meatballs have turned from pink to brown as you don’t want to break them up. Cook everything for about 20 minutes, with the lid only partially covering it. At the end of cooking time, check the seasoning, as you may want more salt and a grind or two more of pepper.

PASTA

To go with these divine meatballs, I like tagliatelle. De Cecco, Spinosi or Cipriani brands are all very good, but making fresh pasta is an experience worth trying. No one’s saying you have to make it, but once you try, you’ll soon see that it’s not difficult. I had a pasta machine for years before I was brave enough to use it; for some reason I thought it would be a performance. But I tried and it isn’t, and I rather like the mood of peaceful concentration the activity ushers forth. And it’s a great way of playing in the kitchen with children: they love turning the handle, which is actually a help, not often the case when the children are cooking with you.

Quantities are easy so long as you remember you need 1 egg per 100g of 00 flour (now available at most supermarkets), and that, on average, one ‘egg’ of pasta, as it were, feeds two generously.

Serves 4–6.

400g Italian 00 flour

fat pinch of salt

4 eggs

Either put the flour (with the salt) in a bowl and crack the eggs into it, or make a mound of flour on a worktop and add the eggs to that. I don’t bother to beat them before adding them to the flour, but if you prefer to, do. Just find the way that you prefer. All you do is mix the flour and eggs together, and then knead the mixture until it all comes together in a satiny mass. Kneading involves no more than pushing the mixture away from you with the heels of your hands and then bringing it back towards you. If you’ve got an electric mixer with a dough hook, then use that, though for some reason I don’t find it makes the pasta cohere any sooner. And you don’t get the relaxing satisfaction of making it by hand.

When the pasta is silky and smooth, form it into a ball, cover with a cloth and leave for 30 minutes to an hour. Then get out your pasta machine, read the instructions and away you go. Two tips first: cut each slice you want to feed through the pasta machine as you go, and put through the no.1 press quite a few times, folding the strip in half and pushing it through again after each time. When the pasta dough’s been fed a few times through the no.1 slot, pass it through the remaining numbers on the gauge, before pushing it through the tagliatelle-cutters. And I find that the pasta strips cut into tagliatelle better if you leave them hanging over the table or wherever to dry a little first (10 minutes is enough).

When you cook the pasta, make sure you’ve got plenty of boiling, salted water and start tasting immediately the water comes back to the boil after you’ve put the pasta in. Use about a third of the meatballs in their sauce to toss the cooked, drained pasta in and then pour the rest of them over the scantly sauced ribbons in the bowl. This is ambrosia: food to get you through the winter happily.

SOFT AND SHARP INVOLTINI

I often make a southern-Italian dish of involtini: aubergines, sliced thinly, griddled and cooled, and then wrapped around a mixture of basil, pine nuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, provolone and parmesan, bound with egg, then baked in tomato sauce dotted with mozzarella. It’s fiddly, but not difficult, and perfect for those times when you have the desire for a bit of slow pottering about in the kitchen. It also happens, as does this version, to be an incredibly useful standby for vile meat eaters like me who want to have something for vegetarians at a dinner party or whatever.

I’ve still called this involtini, although in truth there is nothing Italian about its component parts. The flavours are more Greek in nature: sharp feta, which perfectly offsets the soft sweetness of the aubergines; and oregano, which is, dried and aromatic, the herb of the islands. It also occurred to me that using a dried herb made this a useful, year-round regular. In fact, it was my vegetarian option at my Christmas lunch last year.

I tend to do this in stages: the tomato sauce and griddled aubergines one day; the stuffing, wrapping and baking the next. And I love it at room temperature the next day, too.

Serves 4 as a main course.

for the sauce:

1 onion

1 clove garlic

half a teaspoon dried oregano

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

2 teaspoons sugar

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

4 aubergines

olive oil for painting the aubergines (have plenty on hand)

ovenproof dish, approx. 30 x 21cm

for the stuffing:

100g bulgar wheat

1 teaspoon dried oregano

350ml boiling water

50g pistachios, roughly chopped

200g feta, crumbled

1 clove garlic, minced

1 fat or 2 thin spring onions, finely sliced

2 tablespoons capers (drained of vinegar)

1 egg

a pinch of cinnamon

for the top:

75g feta, crumbled

drizzle of olive oil

fat pinch of dried oregano

Peel and roughly chop the onion and press on the garlic with the flat of a knife to loosen the skin. Remove it and then sling onion, garlic and dried oregano into a food processor and blitz to a pulp. Cook in a deep, generous-sized pan (with a lid) in the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, over a medium to low heat, until softened – about 7 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the sugar, stir well, cover and turn down the heat, and let cook for about 20 minutes, checking often to see that the sauce is not bubbling too vociferously (and therefore sticking or drying out, or indeed both). Taste for seasoning, add salt and pepper or maybe a pinch more sugar if you feel it needs it, then stir again, add the extra-virgin olive oil, and take off the heat but keep the cover on. Leave till you need it.

Cut the aubergines in thinnish slices lengthways and chuck away the two skin-covered edges: you need to be able to roll the aubergine lengths up later and so you need the full extent. It may sound wasteful, but I’m happy if I get 4–5 good slices per aubergine. Put some oil into a bowl and using a pastry brush, paint each slice generously with the oil. Then cook them on a hot griddle until bronzed, striped without and tender within. Or you can dispense with all the painting procedure and just fry the aubergine slices in a pan filled to about half a centimetre’s depth of olive oil. In either case, remove the cooked slices to sheets of kitchen towel to absorb excess oil. Cook all the aubergine slices this way and then, when cool, you can either begin the stuffing and rolling, or set them aside until you want to. If I’m doing this in advance, I line a dish with baking parchment, arrange a layer of aubergine slices on top, then cover with baking parchment, then another layer of aubergines and so on, until I’ve packed them all away. Cover with a layer of baking parchment and leave till needed.

I tend to stuff the aubergines shortly before cooking them. Measure the bulgar wheat into a bowl, add the dried oregano, pour over the water and cover with a plate. Leave to steep for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5, and oil your ovenproof dish lightly.

When the bulgar wheat has had its time, pour it into a large sieve and press down to remove excess water. Leave for a few minutes till it’s cooled a little and then decant to a large bowl. Add about two-thirds of the chopped pistachios (you just need to leave some for sprinkling when serving), the crumbled feta, minced garlic, spring onions and capers. Stir to mix, but don’t be too heavy-handed about it: a few goes with a fork should be enough to combine everything. Beat the egg with the cinnamon and fork this in, too. I find it easier after that’s done just to weigh in with my hands, squeezing everything together so you’ve got a cohesive, nubbly stuffing in front of you.

Get out the aubergines and, one by one, place them in front of you, stalk end at the top, bulbous bottom nearest you. Add a dollop of stuffing at the bottom, roll up lengthways away from you and put each fat little bundle in the oiled dish as you go. When they’re all sitting there snuggly, pour over the tomato sauce, scatter over the 75g of crumbled feta, drizzle with oil, sprinkle over a little dried oregano and cook for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand at least 15 minutes before serving: this shouldn’t be piping hot. Scatter with the remaining pistachios before bringing it to the table.

PASTA E FAGIOLI

This is that life-saving, thick, pasta-and-bean meal of a soup as sung about by Dean Martin in ‘That’s Amore’. It’s just the thing you want to eat when the rain’s battering against the window panes and just what you need to cook to make you feel that you’re safe and warm, happy and occupied within.

I have to say, it’s the first time I’ve included a popsock among any list of ingredients. By all means bundle the rosemary and onion into a muslin cloth if it makes you feel more satisfactorily homespun, but I am just not one of those efficiently traditional domestic types that keeps cheesecloths and muslins on hand.

Serves 8.

500g borlotti beans

5 cloves of garlic, whole, plus 1, Microplaned or grated

1 popsock

2 leafy sprigs of rosemary

1 onion, peeled and quartered

salt to taste

1 tablespoon tomato concentrate

3 tablespoons olive oil

sprig of rosemary, about 6cm, needles finely chopped

200g ditalini or other small pasta tubes

extra-virgin olive oil, to serve

Put the borlotti beans in a large bowl, cover with cold water and let the beans soak overnight or for at least 6 hours.

Drain the beans and tip them into a large saucepan. Using the flat side of a large knife, press down on the whole garlic cloves so that their papery skins tear and begin to come away. Peel them and chuck the bruised cloves on top of the beans. Now take your popsock and in it pop, appropriately enough, the sprigs of rosemary and cut-up onion. This will stop the needles (which turn bitter on boiling) from infiltrating the soup (very irritating between the teeth, too) but allow their resiny fragrance to seep through. I also find it better not to have slimy onion skins all over the place later. Cover everything generously with cold water, clamp on a lid and bring to the boil. Once it’s started boiling, turn the heat down and simmer for an hour. Check the beans to see how cooked they are and, only when they’re tender, add salt to taste.

Chuck out the corpsed popsock and its contents. Remove a mugful of beans – or more if you want a very thick soup – and tip into a blender (my preference) or processor, along with a tablespoonful of tomato concentrate and 250ml of the bean-cooking liquid and liquidise.

Now, add the 3 tablespoons of oil to a small saucepan and grate (I always use my fine Microplane for this) or squeeze in the sixth clove of garlic. Cook over a low to medium heat until soft but not coloured and then stir in the finely chopped rosemary. Cook for another scant minute, add the liquidised soup and cook for a minute or so, then tip into the large pan of beans. Bring back to the boil and add the ditalini, cooking them according to packet instructions. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and serve.

CHOCOLATE CLOUD CAKE

On days when I want the warmth of the hearth rather than the hurly burly of the city streets I stay in and read cookery books, and this recipe comes from just the sort of book that gives most succour, Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax. The cake itself (which was the pudding I made for last New Year’s Eve dinner) is as richly and rewardingly sustaining: a melting, dark, flourless, chocolate base, the sort that sinks damply on cooling; the fallen centre then cloudily filled with softly whipped cream and sprinkled with cocoa powder. As Richard Sax says, ‘intensity, then relief, in each bite’.

Serves 8–12.

250g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids

125g unsalted butter, softened

6 eggs: 2 whole, 4 separated

175g caster sugar

2 tablespoons Cointreau (optional)

grated zest of 1 orange (optional)

23cm springform cake tin

for the cream topping:

500ml double cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon Cointreau (optional)

½ teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

Line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment.

Melt the chocolate either in a double boiler or a microwave, and then let the butter melt in the warm chocolate.

Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75g of the caster sugar, then gently add the chocolate mixture, the Cointreau and orange zest.

In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add the 100g of sugar and whisk until the whites are holding their shape but not too stiff. Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites, and then fold in the rest of the whites. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35–40 minutes or until the cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly. Cool the cake in its tin on a wire rack; the middle will sink as it cools.

When you are ready to eat, place the still tin-bound cake on a cake stand or plate for serving and carefully remove the cake from its tin. Don’t worry about cracks or rough edges: it’s the crater look we’re going for here. Whip the cream until it’s soft and then add the vanilla and Cointreau and continue whisking until the cream is firm but not stiff. Fill the crater of the cake with the whipped cream, easing it out gently towards the edges of the cake, and dust the top lightly with cocoa powder pushed through a tea-strainer.