Napolitana Sauce

This is the obvious next sauce to consider; tomatoes and onions. Normally I recommend fresh ingredients, but tomatoes are the exception that proves the rule. You just don't get the gutsy flavour required out of the insipid supermarket offerings, which are bred for looks and shelf-life. Unless you have access to homegrown varieties selected for taste, use tinned tomatoes, and don't be ashamed of doing so. Anyway, here's the recipe:

Equipment:

Medium saucepan
Chopping board
Cooking knife
Garlic press
Cooker (1 ring required)
Can opener

Ingredients - serves 2

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
2 tablespoons fresh basil
seasoning to taste

unauthentic optional extra - a good dash of worcestershire sauce.

Method

As you would expect. The onions go chopped into the oil, and fry gently in the pan for a few minutes. They are followed by the garlic, tomatoes and herbs, and the whole lot is simmered for about half an hour, until the tomatoes are cooked and the consistency quite thick. Then, pour over your favourite pasta, or use as a base sauce for pizza topping, or as a layer in lasagne.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

Incidentally, I have it on good authority that the Italians always bring the pasta to the sauce, rather than the sauce to the pasta. Well, that's foreigners for you. They don't even know how to serve their own cuisine.

Pasta Aglio e Olio

(pasta with garlic and oil)

One for garlic lovers, who don't have to meet important clients the following day!

Equipment

Saucepan
Frying pan
Mortar and pestle
Garlic press
Cooker (2 rings needed)
Pepper mill

Ingredients - 4 servings

Fettucine for 4
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
10 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon crushed dried chillies, lightly ground
1 cup chopped fresh (ideally Italian) parsley
Fresh ground black pepper to serve

Optional extras:

Chopped cherry or sun dried tomatoes
Diced bacon
Diced red bell peppers (capsicums)
Grated parmesan cheese to serve


Method

Cook the fettucine according to the makers instructions.

Simultaneously, fry the garlic, salt and chillies in the oil, until the garlic is lightly brown. It won't take long. Be careful not to over-cook the garlic, or the flavour will suffer.

Turn out the pasta into a serving bowl, pour over the oil mix, toss to coat thoroughly. Strew with the herbs.

Enjoy.

Best, 2ndRateMind.

Buttered Spaghetti

Every so often I find I have month at the end of my money. When that happens, as it inevitably does, I tend to pad out the days with pasta. Pasta, of course, has risen in price by nearly three times over the last six months (due, I'm told, to a bad harvest last year), but it still represents good value and a useful tummy-filler. Anyway, this week, I thought I'd list some quick, cheap, and easy ways to serve pasta, without compromising on taste. I tend to find ways of using whatever store-cupboard ingredients I was sensible enough to invest in, earlier in the month, so everything that follows over the next few days will reflect that.

Equipment

A spaghetti portion measurer
A large saucepan
A cooker (1 ring needed)
A sieve or colander
A pepper mill

Ingredients

Spaghetti
A teaspoon or so of salt
Enough water
15g melted butter per portion
Grated hard Italian cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
A sprinkling of dried basil and/or oregano

Method

Boil up the spaghetti in salted water according to the packet instructions. When ready (it's supposed to stick to the wall, when you fling a sample piece at it) drain into the sieve/colander.
Melt the butter in the same, still hot, saucepan.

Turn out the spag into your serving dish, and add your melted butter and herbs. Mix. Grind your black pepper, and sprinkle your cheese, over the top.

It sounds like poverty rations, but in fact it's very tasty, and allows one to appreciate the flavour of spaghetti in itself, something that rich and strong sauces often overpower.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

Marinated Olives

Here's a recipe for marinated olives, which I find go well with the rice wine we looked at yesterday:

Equipment

Mixing bowl
Garlic press
Stirring spoon
Mortar and pestle
Fridge
Scales
Measuring Jug

Ingredients

100g pitted green olives
100g pitted black olives
2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
Juice of half a lemon
40 ml olive oil
80 ml white wine vinegar
Half a teaspoon of ground crushed dried chillies
2 tablespoons of chopped fresh basil

Method

It couldn't be easier. Just put everything into a mixing bowl, and stir to mix, ensuring the olives are all thoroughly coated.
Leave in the fridge to marinate overnight.
Serve with aperitifs, or put into attractive jars for an inexpensive but thoughtful, hand-crafted gift.
They should keep well for at least a week, sealed in airtight containers in the fridge.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

Rapid Rice Wine

To eat food you've grown is just fine;
There is no better way you can dine
- I think it's just great
To fill your own plate -
But best is to drink your own wine.

I don't know about you, but I like a glass of something when I eat. Or cook. Or entertain. In fact, I like a glass of something, full-stop.

So here is a simple recipe for a wine that's ready in a mere three weeks, but will improve if kept longer.

Equipment

A 5 gallon fermenting bin, sterile
A 1 gallon saucepan or stock-pot
A cooker (1 fast ring needed)
3 1 gallon demijohns, sterile
3 bungs with airlocks fitted, sterile
A siphon tube, sterile
A funnel, sterile
A nylon mesh, sterile
18 wine bottles and corks, sterile
A corking device
A long handled stirring spoon, sterile

Ingredients - makes 3 gallons, plus a little for sampling.

2 kg rice (cheapest will do)
1.5 kg raisins
4.5 kg sugar
3.5 gallons boiling water
wine yeast
yeast nutrient
finings

Method.

The basic requirement for wine-making is to keep everything scrupulously clean, and even sterile, if it comes into contact with your fermenting or fermented brew.

Firstly, then, put your raisins (whole, no need to chop), and your rice into your fermenting bin. Boil up your first gallon of water in the stock-pot, and dissolve 1.5 kg sugar into it. Bring back to the boil, and then pour over the rice and raisins. Repeat, twice. Finally, boil up the last half gallon, and add it, neat. Fit the lid, and let everything cool over night.

The next day, add the yeast and nutrient according to the makers instructions. Stir. For the next 21 days, you need do nothing, except stir on a daily basis, and maybe siphon off a little every few days to taste, and see how it's getting along.

At the end of this time, siphon off into your demijohns, through the mesh and funnel, to keep them pesky raisins out of your wine. At this point, if your wine isn't sparkling clear, and you care about that, you can add finings to precipitate the cloudiness. Again, go by the manufacturers instructions.

Once your wine is clear, you can either drink it, or bottle it for keeping. Good luck!

I find 3 gallons costs me about £12.00 to make, including the cost of fairly-traded sugar, or about £0.67 per bottle. What's more, this wine can be substituted, without much compromise and in equal quantities, into any recipe that calls for dry sherry.

Best, 2ndRateMind.

Here's where to get gear, yeast etc, in Bristol: http://www.citikey.com/business/10039491/

Here's a few words on sterilising: http://thehungerstop.blogspot.com/2009/06/sterilising-jars-and-such.html

Yes we can!

Well, we've looked at cooking Dahl, and it's various accompaniments. That was what I wanted to achieve for this week. Now, if you will humour me a little, I want to tackle the common idea that absolute poverty, famine, malnutrition and hunger are inevitable, and nothing can be done to resolve them. During my occasional reading, the following quotes stood out as particularly pertinent:

• Thirty million people a year die of hunger. And 800 million suffer from chronic malnutrition.
• The total wealth of the world's three richest individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries - a quarter of all the world's states.
• Food is not in short supply. In fact, food products have never been so abundant. There is enough available to provide each of the Earth's inhabitants with at least 2700 calories per day. But production alone is not enough...
• The UN calculates that the whole of the world population's basic needs for food, drinking water, education and medical care could be covered by a levy of less than 4% on the accumulated wealth of the 225 largest fortunes. To satisfy all the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only $13 billion, hardly as much as the people of the United States and European Union spend each year on perfume.

Ignacio Ramonet, 'The Politics of Hunger', Le Monde Diplomatique, Nov 1998. Quoted by Gary Alexander, eGaia, 2002, Lighthouse Books, Diss, Norfolk, UK

Once we all realise that the malnourishment problem is not production, but distribution, then I think we are well on the way to ending hunger, globally, for ever.

And we can end hunger, if we all want to, enough.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

A Word About Boiling Rice

If you have your own method of cooking rice, (and most people do, and they are remarkably dissimilar) and it works for you, stick to it. Ignore this section - it is for people who are daunted by rice, perhaps because they have tried to cook it before, and it ended up a glutinous mess stuck to the bottom of their saucepan.

Cooking rice is nothing to be afraid of, but it is not something to do by remote control. Due care and attention is required.

Use a good quality rice - basmati for Indian dishes, Thai fragrant or similar for Thai or Chinese dishes.

Use a large saucepan. Rice likes freedom as it boils.

A cup of dried rice per person is about right. You need a ratio of three times the amount of water to rice, or more.

Begin by adding the water to your saucepan, with a teaspoon or two of salt. Bring to the boil. Add the rice, stirring with a metal implement to separate any coagulated grains. Bring back to the boil, and then turn down the heat to a lazy simmer. Then let it cook for 5 minutes.

The next bit is where care is required. Do not allow yourself to be distracted; there is a fine line between underdone rice, rice that's ready, and disaster. Test the rice in your mouth - if it's gritty, it needs more time. Keep testing, every minute or so. As you gain experience, you will be able to tell when your rice is done by eye - it goes an opaque white - and even by sound - the simmer becomes quieter. During this time, add more water as required, boiling from the kettle, to keep the rice entirely submerged.

When your rice is pliant to the mouth, and tastes and textures are what you would expect, turn it out into a large sieve. Shake off any excess moisture, and turn it out into your serving dish, fluffing it up as necessary.

It's that easy.

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind