19th May 2007

Well, it's a good old Saturday evening - the FA cup's been won by Chelsea but I have to say it was quite a boring match for the most part. About the most exciting thing up to Drogba's goal was the parade of FA Hero's before the match. Now that was interesting. I mean, there were all those really rather gorgeous young men who rushed around the pitch and scored goals and stuff - somehow replaced by middle aged men. But on the other hand, Dennis Law is still looking good for his age, so it wasn't all bad news!

Anyhow, like I said, the football was a bit so-so, but at the end of the day it's probably best for Chelsea to win. No one wants to see Mourinho leave, he may not exactly be as special as he seems to think that he is, but he's good value for the money in anyone's terms. But what I was going to post about has nothing to do with football at all - it's all about pasta!!!

Yes, dear reader, I made a pasta sauce yesterday that has to be tasted to be believed. It's the sort of sauce that with the addition of a bit of extra liquid, and a few garlic fried croutons would make a heck of a good soup, and if you like your soups thick, then frankly don't bother with the extra liquid.

I'm going to call it End of the Month Sauce, because basically that's what it is - the best way to use up the left over veggies in your fridge to eke out your paycheque till next week and live life in style whilst you're doing so. I'm mean just check this out -

Doesn't that look good?

So how do you make this sauce of wonder? Its a doddle. The ingrediants are:

1 large onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 can of Italian tomato's, with a couple of good squirts of tomato puree

1 medium sized courgette

2 medium sized carrots

a teaspooon of oregano

Olive oil

Chop all of the veg into small pieces, of roughly 1 inch dimensions. Heat the oil in a pan large enough to hold everything, with a lid. Leaving the lid off, sweat the onion off until transparent, on a low heat and chop the garlic into small pieces - toss the garlic into the pan once the onion has just started to frizzle. When the onion and garlic have become soft and white, add the carrots and courgettes - I peel my carrots, but always leave the skin on the courgette. Give it a good scrub first though!

Give it a good stir, and pop the lid on - leave it to sweat off for a good five minutes. Give it another good stir, and add the tomatoes & puree - another good stir and pop the lid on again for another five to ten minutes. At that point I add a reasonable quantity of water, enough to top up the tomato liquid so that the vegetables are all floating in water but that the top layer is poking through. If it looks weak, add more tomato puree, and add the oregano. Put the lid on, and bring to a simmer. Let it simmer away for a good twenty minutes before giving in another good stir. At that point, I give it a good hour on the top of the stove, checking it every fifteen minutes or so. Keep the lid on, give it a regular stir when you check it - you don't want anything catching on the base of the pan - and don't let it boil. You want a nice, low, rolling simmer.

At that point, turn the heat off and let it cool. When it's cold, get out your blender, and blend the mix up - I do mine a couple of ladlesful at a time, and give it a good couple of pulses lasting approximately 15 seconds each. I always give the blender a small shake in between pulses, so that everything in the blender is well mixed and you don't have a hard piece of carrot stuck under the blender blades - but do remember to turn the power off when you do this, and never be tempted to stick a knife in there with the power still switched on. We're clever cooks here, not cooked cooks.

When it's all blended, put it in the fridge for when you're ready to eat. For the first meal, I'd made up some burgers recently and had one left over - I say a burger, but it was minced pork and grated apple, and grated onion, so it was a large flat pork ball really! I'd cooked it, what.. Thursday, and had the one left over. I put the sauce into a pan, and bought it up to hot before I put the burger in there - so the pork went straight into a hot environment. I had a few juices on the dish I'd stored the burger on, so I scraped those up and added them - a little gravy stock never goes amiss. I had it with plain boiled rice and it was lovely.

Today's meal was the sauce with ravioli - these are four cheese ravioli. I'm not a huge cheese fan, but there's no reason why you can't coat the top of this with grated parmesan if you want. And of course a good sprinkling of parsley. With a nice glass of wine (if you're not still taking the painkillers!) it's an extremely good meal. Tomorrow, I may throw in a tin of tuna and have it with plain pasta. It's incredibly versatile, and like I said, why not chop up whatver you've got in the fridge? Any vegetable will do, so long as you don't try serving it to a small child with spinach in it. On the other hand, frankly, I think this sauce is a fabulous way of concealing vegetables from children. We all know kids who won't eat them - because this has carrots and tomato's in it, you could just about throw in all of the spinach you want, and I reckon they'd be hard put to taste 'em. And I have to say that if I'd had it to hand I would have put in a good deal of shelled broad beans. I have a passion for broad beans, even the frozen ones. Boil them up for about 3 - 5 minutes, rinse under the cold tap, and then sit down with two bowls. Pop the luscious green innards out of each little shell, and keep on going. When you've done the whole bowlful, you've got a vegetable of the gods there. Try tiny ones in salad, with feta and cherry tomatoes - toss in a few anchovies and mm-mm. For a special Sunday lunch, even Christmas, de-pod them the night before, cover them with clingfilm and store in the fridge overnight. The next day, melt some butter in a large pan, on the lowest possible heat, and arm yourself with a very large potato masher. Put the beans in handful by handful, mashing as you go. Add some double cream to liquify it a little, a bit more butter, and as much fresh ground black pepper as your grinder will produce! (Or to taste, actually...!) This is the little known real recipe for Ambrosia, the food of the gods! It will reduce you to a shambling addicted mess within a very few spoonsful, forever stocking up your freezer with bags of broad beans, and urging your family out of the house, so that you can make an entire bowl of this to pig out with in front of the tv.

Yes. Right. Ok, back to normal here. We all have our little food fancies now don't we?!