Forever Summer (8 page)

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic

150g button mushrooms

2 tablespoons dried oregano

2 tablespoons olive oil

500g lamb mince

250ml red wine

2 x 400g tins tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato purée mixed with 2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon caster sugar

salt and black pepper

500g spaghetti, spaghettini, linguine or tagliatelle

200g feta cheese

Blitz the onion, garlic, mushrooms and a tablespoon of the dried oregano to rubble in the processor, or just chop finely by hand. Cook in the oil in a frying pan which will take the meat later for about 10 minutes on a low-to-medium heat, until softened. Don’t panic if it looks as if you’ve got a ridiculously vast panful at first: it will cook down to a more modest amount. Push the cooked onion and mushroom mixture to the sides when softened, and add the minced lamb to the pan, stirring and prodding with your wooden spoon until the raw colour has lost its edge. Add the wine and let it bubble up for a minute or so. Then add the tomatoes, the tomato purée which you’ve diluted with the milk, the remaining tablespoon of oregano, the sugar, a teaspoon or so of salt and a good grinding of pepper. Stir well, so that the tomatoes break up and everything is mixed together, cover and cook for at least 30 minutes over a lowish heat. That’s to say, all meat sauces like this are better the longer they’re (slowly) cooked, but don’t worry if you’ve got only half an hour.

Meanwhile, put a copious amount of water to boil in the largest pan you’ve got. When it’s boiling, salt well and cook the pasta according to taste and packet instructions. While it’s cooking, chop or crumble the feta (I use my mezzaluna here) and warm a large bowl or plate (just filling it with hot water in the sink’s fine). When the pasta’s ready, drain it and toss it with a ladleful or so of the meat sauce. Turn into the warmed (and dried) bowl or plate, push towards the edges and pour the rest of the meat sauce on top and in the middle. Crumble over the chopped feta and serve, immediately.

Serves 6 as a starter; 4 as a main course.

BAKED PASTA SHELLS STUFFED WITH SPINACH AND RICOTTA

I admit that stuffed pasta, swathed in tomato sauce and baked in the oven doesn’t
look
summery, but the point is this: the tomato sauce that dresses the pasta is light and fresh; the ricotta and spinach within it are lighter and fresher still. It’s fiddly to make, I’ll grant you, but there is a calming, ritualistic aspect to it that makes it strangely unflustering to put together in anything but the most scorching summer heat. Besides, I like this best left to sit for a while once it’s done its time in the oven, so that you eat it warm rather than hot; strangely enough – given the amount of green stuff in it – so do my children.

You can make this in advance – that’s to say, cook and stuff the pasta and sit it in its sauce and leave it, covered in the fridge for a few hours, before adding the final bit of parmesan and baking it in the oven – which can make life easier if you’ve got a huge tableful of people coming over later. To be honest, this is the sort of pasta you give people as a main course, with nothing but an astringently dressed crisp green salad.

1 clove garlic, minced

1 onion, finely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 x 700g bottles tomato passata

700g fresh spinach (or 1kg frozen chopped spinach, thawed and thoroughly drained)

500g ricotta

2 eggs, beaten

1 x 100g piece parmesan

freshly grated nutmeg

salt and pepper

500g large pasta shells

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

In a very large saucepan, gently fry the garlic and onion in the oil for about 5–10 minutes until translucent. Add the passata and refill both bottles with water about three-quarters full, giving them a good shake to mop up any tomato. This will give you about 1.2 litres water. Add it to the pan. Bring the sauce to the boil and then partially cover and simmer for about 25 minutes.

Soak the fresh spinach in some cold water in the sink to get rid of any mud, drain and then cook in just the water that’s still clinging to the leaves until it has wilted down and cooked through, then drain well and chop roughly (you can just go at it with scissors while it’s sitting in the colander). If you’re using frozen chopped spinach, make sure – once it’s thawed – that you’ve pressed out every last bit of water; you can also use frozen leaf spinach, and chop it yourself once it’s thawed and drained.

Empty the ricotta into a bowl, add the eggs and then grate in about 75g of the parmesan. Add the spinach when it is cool, squeezing out (again) any excess water with your hands, then stir everything together and season it well with the nutmeg and salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta shells in a large pan of water, for about 5 minutes once they have come back to the boil, then drain and leave them to get cool enough for you to stuff them without burning your fingers. Tip the shells into a dish, of approximately 38 x 32cm, so that they lie in a single layer, then fill each shell with a heaped teaspoon of the spinach and ricotta filling. Ladle the tomato sauce over the pasta, and grate over the remaining parmesan.

Bake for about 20–30 minutes by which time the pasta will be tender and the light tomato sauce hot and bubbling. Remove from the oven and let stand for a while to cool down slightly before serving.

Serves 8–10.

SOBA NOODLES WITH SESAME SEEDS

I love the Japanese way of eating cold noodles: I just lift a bowl to my face, fork furiously and slurp. If you want to make these part of a meal, then know that they go wonderfully well with salmon: just get some fillets, sear them in a hot pan, leaving the interior fleshily coral. But I love eating these as they are, in huge quantities and – preferably – alone. Because they’re served cold, you can profitably keep leftovers for midnight fridge-raiding later. Boxed into foil containers, they are the perfect, if unconventional, food to take along for a picnic.

75g sesame seeds

salt

250g soba noodles

2 teaspoons rice vinegar

5 teaspoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons sesame oil

5 spring onions

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over a high heat until they look golden brown, and tip them into a bowl.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and add some salt. Put in the soba noodles and cook them for about 6 minutes (or according to packet instructions) until they are tender but not mushy. Have a bowl of iced water waiting to plunge them into after draining.

In the bowl you are going to serve them in, mix the vinegar, soy sauce, honey and oil. Then finely slice the spring onions and put them into the bowl with the cooled, drained noodles and mix together thoroughly before adding the sesame seeds and tossing again.

Leave the sesame seed noodles for about half an hour to let the flavours develop, although this is not absolutely necessary or sometimes even possible.

Serves 4 as part of a meal; or 2 when eaten, gratifyingly, as they are.

OLD-FASHIONED TOMATO SALAD

This tomato salad is all you need for a summer starter. What I do is take the tomatoes out into the garden, uncut, on a flat plate or two, for an hour before I want to make the salad: it takes any chill off them and makes them taste somehow more tomatoey. Cherry tomatoes perhaps sound new-fangled rather than old-fashioned, but I’m coming to that. For the dressing is, and I refuse to apologise for it, nothing more nor less than that great – though, now that we live in the extra-virgin age, greatly discredited – item from the English culinary canon, Salad Cream. Banish all childhood memories of sick-flavoured gloop in a jar: this is worlds and E-additives apart. The recipe I give for it is by and large adapted from Margaret Costa: I have substituted tarragon vinegar, which I prefer here, but do use cider vinegar, as she stipulates, if you want. Any leftover salad cream can be stored in the fridge in an old jam jar; indeed you may find you want to make double the amount below, so well will it go down.

It’s hardly English, but I use Italian 00 flour (available at supermarkets now) instead of plain flour because it loses its flouriness with less cooking than does our coarser-milled home-grown variety, but it’s not worth losing sleep over.

500g good cherry tomatoes, halved

quarter teaspoon made English mustard or pinch mustard powder

1 heaped tablespoon 00 or plain flour

1 teaspoon caster sugar

salt and black pepper

250ml full-fat milk

1 egg, beaten

4 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

1 tablespoon sunflower oil

chives or green parts of spring onions

Half fill a sink with cold water.

Combine the mustard, flour and sugar, with about a teaspoon of salt and a good grinding of pepper, in a heavy-based saucepan. Add a little of the milk and stir to mix to a smooth paste, then put on a gentle heat and keep adding the milk, and stirring as you do so. I find my Magiwhisk the best thing to banish lumpiness here, but it’s not a difficult operation whatever you use.

When all the milk’s in, add the beaten egg and vinegar and keep on whisking until it’s beginning to thicken. When the mixture’s got the texture of single cream, whisk in the oil then plunge the pan in the sink of cold water and continue whisking for a while. When it’s cool (you can pour into a bowl then put the bowl over ice if you want speedy cooling), cut the tomatoes in half and arrange on one huge plate or two fairly large ones. Drizzle a few spoonfuls over (don’t drench: think Jackson Pollock) then add some chopped spring onions or chives. Unexpected heaven.

Serves 6.

RAW BEETROOT, DILL AND MUSTARD SEED SALAD

I am convinced that it is when raw that beetroot is at its best, and this recipe offers the most persuasive evidence; I promise you that it is loved even by those who were traumatised by putridly sweet and vinegary school beetroot. The dill and mustard seed here resonate with Scandinavian flavours, and for this reason I most often serve it alongside
seared mustard-coated salmon
and
Hasselback potatoes
. But if you can’t find fresh dill or just shudderingly abominate it, use flat-leaf parsley in its place. At any rate, the salad lends itself to whatever herby combination you’re in the mood for; I just as often go the Stephanie Alexander route (in whose
Cook’s Companion
I discovered the sweet nuttiness and tang of uncooked, grated beet) by forgoing the mustard seeds and dill and bunging in instead, fresh leafy mounds of chopped coriander and mint.