Spaghetti with zucchini

It's been a while but that's because most of the time I'm having something that is already on here or simply not worth publishing. This is a very simple dish; just zucchini, onion, garlic and some cheese (pecorino or parmesan). Enjoy!

Pasta with broad beans

Broad beans are one of the most delicious and easy to grow June greens. You need a lot though because the edible, or rather the tasty, bit is rather small. It is covered with first one thick pod (from which you can make stock if you don't like throwing things away) and then a chewy peel that you should really take off; it's not hard just pop it off between your fingers like when peeling an almond.

The beans have a delicate flavour so don't use strong spices. I used onion, green squash (aka zucchini, courgette) and oregano from the garden.

Almost any short pasta will do but try to pick some with a larger cavity, like gnocchetti sardi, where the beans can hide rather than the one I used.

Gnocchi with cabbage and a side of beetroot

The gnocchi are made from potato, flour and salt. You need to mash the potatoes thoroughly until very smooth. They are quite heavy so you don't need a lot.

I cooked the cabbage with onion, garlic and juniper berries and then added the cooked gnocchi. I'm no expert on cabbage so I don't know what this one is called but it was white but not as pale as white cabbage. I wasn't even sure it was edible at the time but I'm still alive so it must have been.

Incredibly good, try it!

Spaghetti with egg

This is one of the quickest dishes you could ever cook. Nevertheless it is extremely tasty. Just cook the spaghetti until nearly done and then quickly fry, stirring vigorously, with an egg in sauce pan. Add some fresh herbs if you have any.

Cannelloni

Cannello means tube in Italian; consequently these are large tubes. Fill them with anything you want (in this case spinach and cheese), cover with Béchamel sauce - or perhaps a tomato one if the filling is more meaty -and cook in the oven. How to make a tube from a pasta sheet is left to the reader to figure out. Very simple and equally delicious!

Greek salad

Not much to say except that it's difficult to find good olives here. Afterwards remember to shatter the plate on the floor whilst manically swirling around transfixing all women nearby. Then have a glass of retsina before daily football practise (remember: no forward passes). Ela ela!

Continental burgers

It's beef and salad in pita bread. A swift meal on a day filled with teleconferences; as ugly as it gets in other words. All I want is to forget.

Spare ribs in a tomato sauce

Not particularly interesting a cut but I got some so it had to be eaten. The problem with spare ribs is that although they are rather fat they easily go dry when cooked. The method used in this dish was to carefully seal the meat under the grill and then cook it in a rich tomato sauce. It turned out all right but I suspect the best way to cook these be to do as our dear friends across the pond and drench them in honey and who knows what else. Turn off the TV and ingest feeling slightly Laestadian.

Roast beef

The cut is called topside here, it's just behind the tail and it's very lean. The indigenous cook it for hours at a high temperature until until it achieves that acclaimed brick-like texture. Not having mastered that technique yet though I chose to cook it a low temperature until 60 degrees in the centre. Since the cut is so lean you need to add some fat for cooking; this was done by tying a herb infused layer of fat around the roast. The tying was done by the farm, the infusion by me.

With the beef two types of cabbage cooked with fennel and white wine, extremely fresh and tasty.

Gulyás

Gulyás (pronounced Gooy-ush, more or less) is the national dish of Hungary and I've been wanting to give it a go for some time. Finally I convinced one of my Hungarian friends to reveal the secret recipe that - if I understood it right - originates from 12th century Transylvania and has been passed on from generation to generation since.

The dish is essentially beef soup with pasta balls but the original flavouring (paprika and caraway seeds) gives it a bite. I thought it could have done with some garlic but the recipe explicitly forbade that.

All in all a very nice dish with a pleasant aftertaste that stays for a long time. It did make me very thirsty though and water doesn't seem to help, not sure what will...

Boeuf Bourguignon

Good for a rainy day, because it takes almost all day. A mountain stage at the giro works too. Today we had both, how glorious! You can find the recipe anywhere.

I'm watching Julie & Julia while writing this and just as I was typing the title there was a scene about this dish, spooky.

With it some homemade bread, another consequence of the rain and giro combo. Ingredients are water, flour and yeast, and an egg. Here is a picture of one of the loaves.

Pasta with pork & tomato sauce

Pork belly, tomatoes and lots of herbs: parsley, sage and oregano because that is what is available right now in the garden. Very quick and simple and the herbs (when I say a lot I mean A LOT) make the sauce rich and tasty.

Pork roast with an enormous broccoli salad

The pork - shoulder - was roasted for a very long time on a very low temperature. It came out nice and juicy, luckily. The broccoli salad is simply broccoli, oil, garlic and lemon. Cook broccoli only briefly, if it's fresh it's best nearly raw.

Pasta with asparagus

Homemade gnocchetti with asparagus sauce and their tips. The gnocchetti were made using the standard gnocchi attachment. The sauce is very simple but the taste is incredible if you use good fresh asparagus. The exact recipe must not be written down but instructions will be given face to face on request.

Kebab with white cabbage

I assume it's ok to call these Kebab. It's minced lamb mixed with oregano, parsley, sage, mint and garlic, shaped into small sausages and fried in oil.

The cabbage was braised in butter and white wine together with pak choi and a hint of goats cheese for a little extra ovisian emphasis.

Please note the chip in the plate; this was done on purpose to create a rural shepherdian atmosphere. If you serve this at a dinner party do try to crack each plate in a different place. There's also some rice on the plate but I'd recommend skipping that as it didn't really fit.

Lamb casserole

A rustic stew from lamb, beans, tomatoes, carrots, onion, garlic and rosemary. It cooks itself more or less, but since it has beans in it you need to plan a day ahead.

Tagliatelle al Ragu

The ragu was made from minced beef and pork, onion, celery, carrots, parsnip (for that local touch), wine and beef stock. Everything except the wine, and salt, pepper and oil obviously, was home made or bought from local organic producers; as in having organic production I mean.

Tagliatelle is very simple to make yourself if you have a pasta machine. If you don't have one it takes a little bit longer but it's still worth the effort. The one thing you have to be careful with is to have everything ready before cooking the pasta as it cooks in less than a minute and needs to be mixed with the sauce immediately. Here's a little something to listen to while rolling the pasta dough.

Spaghetti alla carbonara

Some use cream but I prefer it without; just pork belly, wine, egg yolk, pecorino, parmesan and parsley.

Pasta frutti di mare

I'm allergic to fish (but not to shellfish for some reason) so I use only prawns, but you can add all kinds of stuff of course.

The prawns mustn't cook in the sauce or they will get soft and mushy. Fry them separately and add them at the end. The sauce is just tomatoes and vegetables, e.g. onions, carrots, celery or whatever you prefer.

Rack of lamb with homemade pommes frites

The local tradition is to cook lamb until hard as a shoe sole, but I am yet to submit. The rack was cooked with garlic and rosemary at 180 degrees for 16 minutes until pink in the centre (I was going to make a burlesque joke here but it's not very funny, excessively dirty and probably only works in Swedish so never mind).

They call the pommes frites "chips" here; not sure if this is a misunderstanding or reluctance to acknowledge that anything good can be French. Fries have an undeserved reputation for being fat and unhealthy. They are probably not particularly healthy but nor are they that bad, and if you make your own ones you don't need to add any fat at all, just cut them up, soak them, squeeze out the liquid and starch and bake in the oven for half an hour or so at as high a temperature as you dare.

The presentation is made up with beetroot from yesterday and some mozzarella because, well, why not?

Eat in front of your TV enjoying a recording of Liège-Bastogne-Liège or a cycle race of your choice.

Veal escalope with beetroot salad

Light, simple and delicious. Very little compares to fresh beetroot with a little oil and salt. The calf had a very happy, albeit short, upbringing.

Pasta with broccoli

Broccoli, garlic and chillies. Ridiculously good, can't think of anything else to say.

Spaghetti with cauliflower

Criminally good, possibly the best pasta dish of them all. For once you will get some more detailed instructions, but don't get used to it.

Reduce a can of tomatoes with a little salt and sugar. Meanwhile boil the pasta water. While you are waiting watch your collection of Roberto Baggio commercials.

Soften the cauliflower flowers in the water, only for a minute or two, don't cook them through. Transfer the flowers to the tomato sauce and then cook the spaghetti with the inevitable cauliflower residues until 30-40 seconds before done, add the pasta to the tomato sauce and cook until you know what.

Eat hot whilst thanking god or evolution for cauliflower.

Salad

A variety of leaves, herbs from the garden, goats cheese and chicken breast from the other day. Chicken is optional, just a way to avoid people mistaking you for a vegetarian.

For dressing: oil and salt, just a little, enough to bring out the full flavour of the salad leaves.

Chicken

For those who wonder (you know who you are): no, the chicken did not receive psychotherapy before its passing.

Kale, green cabbage and haricots verts go really well with this extraordinarily juicy chicken but I was all out of vegetables and in no mood to go the grocery store, hence the Spartan arrangement. To achieve said juiciness brown it all around, add some home made stock - I used vegetable - and let it cook until ready. It takes about half the time it would take to roast in the oven. From the gravy I made a simple sauce with parsley and shallots, but you can just as well use it as is.

If you use frozen, genetically modified and artificially fed chicken you will need to use a lot of spices to hide the flavour. Mine required only salt, honey and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

A cup of tea

I played chess tonight and got home late so just a cup of tea. I hadn't played a game for a couple of months so I was happy with a decent draw. You can play through the game below.

Pasta with pork ragu

Simple and good. Some care is needed when selecting the pasta; it needs to have a large surface area for the sauce to attach to. Tagliatelle or some short pasta like in the picture is good; spaghetti (the shape of which minimizes the surface the area) is less ideal.

The ragu is made from minced pork, onion, celeriac, carrots and tomatoes; all organically produced of course. For flavour add for instance parsley and sage from your garden.

When the pasta is almost ready add it to the sauce and cook for a few seconds. Eat immediately whilst practising pick-up phrases.

Hash browns, eggs over easy and hamburgers

The secret to good hash browns (not to be confused with the famous Dutch patisse) is to eliminate the starch from the potatoes. To this end I soak the potatoes (after grating them ldo) for half an hour or so and then squeeze them with a Spätzle Press. You can probably do away with the soaking if you don't own a suitable bowl.

Eggs, meat and potatoes all organic and purchased directly from the farm.

Serve hot wearing a Stetson.