kaye16's Profile

Joined: December 21st, 2009

Pasta e Fagioli from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

An easy and delicious soup. I used lardons for the meat. We were thinking that chicken sausages would be good, saucisse de volaille or merguez de volaille, cut in quarters lenghtwise, then into little... read more >

recipe reviews (1461)
book reviews (64)
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kaye16's Reviews

6 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 6Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

Real Fast Food

By Nigel Slater
Penguin UK - 1993

Simple and good.

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Very good. Might rolls this up in a flour tortilla rather than a pita.

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This is more a method than a recipe. You can vary it as you like with herbs and cheese. I had a pair of rather large tomatoes and cut just the tops off, rather than halving them. An egg, including its white, filled a tomato about halfway up. Slightly smaller tomatoes might be better. I put in about 1-1/2 tablespoons of cream, but I think this was too much. No tarragon in the garden, but lots of basil. The eggs took considerably more than 20 mintes to get done. I served the tomatoes surrounded by a pilaf, rather than on fried bread. This made a nice, simple lunch dish.

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This sauce has good, strong flavors and it needs a goodly amount of pasta to balance it out. There is probably an error in the amount of pasta shown in the ingredient list. For 2 people, it asks "1 pound fresh or 4 ounces dried pasta". Recipes typically ask 4 ounces of dried pasta per person. I usually use 6-ish ounces for the two of us. For this one, however, 8 ounces would have been better.

Having read Friederike's comment about the saltiness, I did take care to rinse the anchovies well. My olives were pretty salty too. I didn't salt the pasta water, although I'm not sure that makes a big difference.

After I got the sauce stewing in the pot, I thought it looked like an extra tomato wouldn't hurt, so I added one more. (I used oven-dried tomatoes that I keep in the freezer.)

I served the sauce over cascareccia, but I'm thinking something like fettucine might work too.

Extremely easy and fast to make. Water on for the pasta. A bit of chop-chop. (Make a salad as a go-with.) Put the pasta on. Warm the oil. Simmer the sauce. Drain the pasta. Toss with sauce. Serve.

We enjoyed this a lot; Ed said it got an A.

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This recipe sounds odd, but it's really quite good. One time, lacking the potato, I used rice and corn instead. It's meant to be a side, I guess, but I usually serve it as a vegetarian main with a salad.

- Getting 12 slices out of a 10-oz eggplant is a big iffy. A bigger one or two smaller might be needed.
- 2/3 cup oil for brushing is way too much. I used 1/2 cup tonight and will go back to 1/3 cup next time. (Some of the leftover oil made a pretty good vinaigrette, and the rest will not go to waste.)
- 2 tbl butter is enough, but maybe a bit extra butter.
- The ingredient list has 3 garlic cloves; the instructions mention 4. It's up to you.
- If your harissa is salty, be careful in salting the mashed potato/chickpea part.

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Remarkably good for so little effort.
- I used 125g bleu d'Auvergne; my DH who is only learning to appreciate blue cheeses, thought it was just the right amount.
- With no fresh pasta in the freezer and no time to make it from scratch, I used 6oz dried tagliatelle instead, a good amount for two.
- I didn't quite have 1-1/2 cup cream, so topped up with a bit of milk. But this is much too much liquid. (I wish I'd seen friederike's review mentioning this.) Probably 1 cup is enough.
- I used frozen spinach.
- And I used my stick blender to zap it a bit, not too smooth, but not leafy.

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