Tomatoes

Mediterranean Stuffed Lamb Breast – from Gordon Ramsay

Mediterranean Stuffed Lamb Breast – from Gordon Ramsay

Time to get my personal prejudices on the table – I have never enjoyed watching Gordon Ramsay on the television – but I really do like some of his recipes!  There you are – all out in the open!  This recipe is a perfect example!…

Ragù di Osso di Capretto (Kid Goat Bone Ragù)

Ragù di Osso di Capretto (Kid Goat Bone Ragù)

It We need to start with two small confessions.  Firstly, we have not found an authentic Italian recipe for this dish (yet)! And secondly, we have taken longer to name the dish than it did to cook and eat it!!  Lets start with how we…

Braised Goat Kid Shoulder and Chickpea Ragù

Braised Goat Kid Shoulder and Chickpea Ragù

We have been wanting to experiment with goat for some years and have simply never got round to it.  That changed when we came across Moat Goats on a UK cookery programme with the ‘Hairy Bikers’. They are based in Pembrokeshire in Wales and have Boer…

Braised Lamb Neck and Chickpea Ragù

Braised Lamb Neck and Chickpea Ragù

This dish is based on a dish from Angela Hartnett and Cafe Murano.  The original meal was described as “slowly braised lamb neck served with a light chickpea ragù.  The vegetables from the lamb braising liquor adding to the richness of the base of the…

Grab that seasonal veg!

Grab that seasonal veg!

As much as anything this is a ‘reminder to self’!  There are so many wonderful vegetables available in the middle of summer that with or without a recipe we should grab and use them.  Here is a perfect example of that – we had a…

Aubergine and gnocchi puttanesca bake

Aubergine and gnocchi puttanesca bake

Having played with our Aubergine/Gnocchi and Parmigiana bake we have also played with a number of variations over the last year or so.  One of the best has moved it a little closer to a puttanesca sauce with anchovies, capers and olives, and for us…

Wagyu Ragù:- crazy title – great dish!

Wagyu Ragù:- crazy title – great dish!

We have cooked so much ragù on the Big Green Egg but written very little about it.  This is just because I have been overwhelmed by the diversity and breadth of the history of ragù in Italy.  So where do you start?  Well we are…

Pollo alla Cacciatora, Chicken Cacciatora or Hunter’s chicken

Pollo alla Cacciatora, Chicken Cacciatora or Hunter’s chicken

What is in a name? I often think it funny how we accept both the name of dishes and their presentation as though they are ‘original dishes’. I mean original in the sense of – always made this way.  In reality the dishes we have…

Aubergine, ricotta and lemon involtini

Aubergine, ricotta and lemon involtini

Over the last couple of years we have been eating more and more aubergine based dishes.  Usually Italian in style, they always seems to be made with tomatoes too.  When we came across this recipe in our local supermarket’s food magazine it seemed like too…

Shallot, Mushroom & Butterbean Casserole

Shallot, Mushroom & Butterbean Casserole

This is dish is so simple it is almost ridiculous!  It works well cooked in a domestic kitchen and even better when cooked over charcoal. The original recipe comes from our regular vegetable supplier Boxxfresh.  We have just added the odd tweak to this already…

Chilli Mole – A superb plant centric version of a classic chilli

Chilli Mole – A superb plant centric version of a classic chilli

This cook is based on a recipe from Boxxfresh, a UK company supplying really great fresh fruit and vegetables. They described Mole (pronounced ‘mo-lay’) as the ‘quintessential chilli sauce native to Mexico’. It apparently literally means ’everyday sauce’!   As such it is ladled over nachos, tacos, enchiladas, burritos or…

Piperade – a Basque dish that has so many uses!!

Piperade – a Basque dish that has so many uses!!

We have probably done a greater variety of cooking this year as we have largely been confined to home during the Covid pandemic in 2020.   I have intended to use the time to do more writing for the site – but in the end…

Tuna with Sicilian lemon zested beans in tomato sauce

Tuna with Sicilian lemon zested beans in tomato sauce

This week we had too many French beans to cope with and so we needed to be a little inventive!  We therefore combined some of the dishes we have tried over the last couple of decades travelling over Europe and were delighted with the outcome.…

Aubergine Parmigiana revisited – our definitive version!

Aubergine Parmigiana revisited – our definitive version!

We have written before about the glorious ‘Melanzane alla parmigiana’ We first came across it in Italy in the summer of 2017 when travelling through the Dolomites in Northern Italy.  Taste wise it was a plant based dish that absolutely took my breath away ………..…

Slow roasted caramelised fennel – latest reflections

Slow roasted caramelised fennel – latest reflections

We have returned to this dish so often – in so many ways it has been the ‘go to’ dish of the summer!  It has also been popular with friends who have adopted the dish and have added it to their own regular cooking repertoire.…

Grilled Peppers with chickpeas, tomatoes black olives and hot spicy yoghurt

Grilled Peppers with chickpeas, tomatoes black olives and hot spicy yoghurt

We have been playing around with a few meat free dishes, such as our slow roasted caramelised fennel dish and our roasted cauliflower with truffle oil and toasted flax seeds.  But although we like vegetarian food our experience is limited.  Finding the book “Charred” by Genevieve…

La Scottiglia revisited – how close had we got in recreating this dish?

La Scottiglia revisited – how close had we got in recreating this dish?

We were very lucky to be able to go back to the restaurant La Scottiglia in Pescina near Seggiano in Tuscany.  Last year, 2018, we wrote about the wonderful dish La Scottiglia that the restaurant has been named after since 1972.  This year we arrived…

Slow-roasted caramelised fennel

Slow-roasted caramelised fennel

Whilst I have come to love the taste and aroma fennel seeds bringto many Tuscan dishes, I have only occasionally cooked with fennel bulbs. So with some fennel bulbs to use it was time to search the internet for something simple.  This is therefore based…

La Scottiglia

La Scottiglia

For some years now we have visited a delightful restaurant in Tuscany called La Scottiglia in the village of Pescina on the side on Monte Amiata.  We have always been looked after exceedingly well there and it is a place we frequently recommend. They do…

Bruschetta al pomodoro

Bruschetta al pomodoro

Whilst visiting the local supermarket in Tuscany we spied a box of plumb tomatoes ostensibly for preserving. They looked lovely, and at €3.80 for 8Kg clearly too good to resist.  Inevitably, therefore, we are eating a lot of tomato based meals – and what easier…

Over the Top Chilli

Over the Top Chilli

Idly browsing through the internet in 2017 there were lots of “Over the Top” Chilli recipes appearing on social media.  The name itself drew me in!  ‘Over the top’ could just as well describe the obsession of Big Green Egg cooking as much as this…

Bruschetta al pomodoro

Bruschetta al pomodoro

What could be more amazingly simple than Bruschetta al pomodoro – and it both tastes and sounds so much better than tomatoes on toast too.  Perfect as a lunch or as a starter to get the tastebuds tingling for whatever you plan to serve up…