Yes, yes, a hundred times yes from me. Nearly four years ago I found a pasta machine at a garage sale. I had been making pasta from scratch before that but rolling it out with a rolling pin, which meant that lasagna and ravioli were much more likely than spaghetti or tagliatelle. I wrote at the time that “I’m not sure at all whether it will be a stayer.” But…
There’s usually a reason why popular vegetables are popular, and ones nobody has ever heard of are ones nobody has ever heard of.
The blog is neglected, the house is neglected, the garden is neglected, but the kale keeps giving.
This time of year it’s the tomatoes sun dried in the peak of summer that are the treasure. They go in pasta and gnocchi and minestrone and on pizza. A whole handful go into ragu or bean stew. They go on crackers with feta and in tapenade for spreading on toast. And I have to admit, I have been known to eat them straight from the jar.
It’s the southern hemisphere Halloween, and I totally get it why Halloween features pumpkin lamps. Halloween is the final harvest festival, and marks the start of the season of gathering in – firewood, mulch, water, pumpkins, passata, preserves, warm clothes, books, tribe and wisdom.
This is a very fast, healthy, easy, seasonal, meal in a bowl. It will generously serve two on its own, or four as a main side dish. The key ingredient, besides the pumpkin, is a Moroccan spice mix.
My favourite variety of beans at the moment – brown seeded snake beans. So long as I can keep water up to them, they don’t mind how hot it gets, and they bear really prolifically over a month or more. They make a great salad, blanched then dressed with a balsamic olive oil garlic dressing while they are still warm. Or, like this, lightly sauteed with lots of garlic, then…