The flamingo has landed

This year has been the busiest ever, but sadly also my least productive in the kitchen.

Work is bursting at the seams and then I managed to finally completed on the little pink palace! Nicknamed The Flamingo by Herb, the joke is that I don't much like pink and used to avoid it: now I am turning into a librarian Barbara Cartland by some irresistible quirk of fate. 

So be it. It is my new home, even if it does look like Barbie visited.  After gaining possession, Jimmy and I sat at this table in my favourite cafe, Arloe & Moe.  What amazing salt and pepper pots!

Between the unglamourous state of the new kitchen, and the flat I was renting being turned into a building site for the last few weeks I was living there, I have not cooked properly, or regularly, for months.  Disproportionate joy, then, at this first stove-top supper in the Flamingo.

It will be some months before I have a fully functioning kitchen so for now I will be learning to cook camping-style. I hope my real cooking muscles don't atrophy!

chicken and rice re-vamped

A little addenda to previous chicken and rice mentions.

I got boring about a very plain chicken recipe some years back, re-ignited my love of it when Melly Bo said it was basically the same as Asian chicken and rice, sans rice (such nice comfort knowing it is a family staple somewhere else), and then promptly forgot all about it.

A year or so later Rosie, staunch robust little Rosie, actually gave in to being tired and unwell and said she'd love to eat something like it: soupy, savoury and nourishing.  Well it only takes chicken pieces, water and a handful of any veg so I gussied some up for her in no time and have been back on the wagon ever since.

Last night I made enough for four frugal portions: 4 big chicken thighs, 6 chunky cut carrots, 3 leeks cut in wedges and a heavy grind of pepper, covered in water and simmered for 40 minutes or so.  Three portions were boxed up for another time.  With the remaining portion, I threw half a cup of rice in the cooking water for the last ten minutes, and some shredded cabbage, making perfect chicken and rice.  I ate it with a dash of English mustard and a nod to Nigella and her 'Praised chicken'.

Tonight I got home late and tired yet again, and was pleased for a little chicken dish waiting.  Having had rice at lunchtime too, I needed a change.  I am simply so excited about this: how easy and speedy it was, and how very filling!

The little portion of plain stewed chicken heated up in no time.  When it was at a simmer I pushed in a scant bowl of pasta shapes (peculiar little ones I get from my local shop, small enough to cook in 6 minutes) and a leftover few florets of broccoli.  After six or seven minutes the pasta was ready and I had an unctuous, soupy mix; into this I grated some parmesan, plonked on a couple of heaped teaspoons of wholegrain mustard and set to.

Perfect.

pasta caring

I thought my cup could not overflow any more when I was given a KitchenAid mixer. All those recipes I have never cooked because I am too lazy to whip egg whites! All the times I made up a Madeleine recipe in order to circumnavigate the real recipe, as it requires 10 minutes of hand-beating! And all the times I have gnashed my teeth in frustration over fridge-cold butter that was too hard to mix... now all a thing of the past.

Well my cup overflowed just that little bit more when the gent gave me a pasta attachment for my birthday: more toy to play with, resulting in my favourite of carbs!

I once made pasta when I lived in Wimbledon, and spent a whole afternoon fighting a mean, uptight ball of dough. My hands were red raw from using a rolling pin to do all the rolling, and the resulting pasta fine to eat... if very chunky.

Yesterday I took no chances and bought the nicest '00' flour that John Lewis foodhall had to offer. The whole process took longer than I thought, given that I was using a machine, but this was down to a first-timer exploring how to do things.

I poured 440g of flour on the work surface, made a well in centre for 3 large eggs and threw over 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Using a fork initially, I scrambled the eggs, then began to draw in a little flour so that the central well slowly increased, as the egg mix turned more doughey. Eventually I gave up the fork and used my hands to pull in the last of the flour, kneading briefly before putting in the Kitchen Aid with a dough hook.

This is clearly a supremely lazy move, but I wanted to see how the hook worked. Brilliantly, is the answer. It didn't look as vigorous as hand-kneading, but the result was a nice, elastic dough: the kind I read about in recipes, but have never made!

The dough rested for 20 minutes whilst I cleared up (our kitchen is tiny) and added the pasta rolling attachment to the mixer. Dividing the dough into four, I worked on one piece at a time, dropping it through the roller on setting one. I fed it through, doubled it over then repeated until satisfied. Once all four pieces of dough had been rolled I repeated the process on settings 2 and 3 - incrementally thinner - until I seemed to have reams of pasta sheets! I dusted liberally with flour to prevent them sticking.

The cutting was the easiest part of all. Feeding each sheet of pasta through the cutter attachment was very quick, and I roughly shaped the tagliatelle into nests on a plate, or hung over a clothes drier.

How did it taste? Springy and firm. Delicious. It was too thick to be elegant, but I really liked it and it tasted good in the cream and salmon sauce that the gent put together. Next time I am going to experiment with rolling the pasta more finely, and also try making filled pasta: my absolute favourite.