One pot pasta comfort food or Un-recipe for pasta pottage

I've been in desperate need of comfort food lately, and when it comes to comfort food, there is nothing more soothing than pasta for me.

The trouble with pasta (aside from me eating too much) is that it's fussy.  Pasta wants specific timing, and water and sauce, and draining.  All of which requires my attention and additional dirty dishes.

Then one day I saw this recipe where you can cook the pasta and the sauce in the same pan at the same time!  Revolutionary!  

As soon as I realized that it was possible, I set about finding a way to this recipe my own.  For starters, I cut down on the volume so that it's just enough to feed one hungry farmer.  I even started cooking it in the bowl I would eat it in - a special korean ceramic bowl specifically for cooking on the stove.

The beauty of this is that it's simple, doesn't mind being left cooking for an extra two hours, and of course, it's delicious.

My un-recipe for Pasta Pottage:

1. Get a small handful of pasta from the cupboard and put it in the pot.  Add water so that all the pasta is covered.
2. Go to the garden and fetch something that looks yummy.  Beans, tomatoes, whatever.  Chop them up and toss them in.
3. Go to the cupboard and/or fridge and fetch something that looks yummy.  Sundry tomatoes, capers, olives, pre-cooked chickpeas or lentils, can tuna drained, leftover chicken breasts.  Chop it up and toss it in.
4. Spice it up.  Salt.  Pepper.  Fresh or dry herbs.  A few drops of Spicy Rooster sauce. All of the above.  Whatever floats your boat.
5. Put a lid on it.
6. Cook on medium low for at least 20 minutes, or it comes to a boil and the pasta is tender.
7. Add cheese.
8. Mix it all up.
9. Enjoy.

There you go, nine simple steps to delicious pasta.

It is an awful lot like an old fashioned pottage.  Only, unlike the pottage of old, this cooks up in as little as 20 minutes, not 6 hours.  Although, I have been known to leave it cooking for up to 3 hours.  The pasta is a bit mushy by then, but the flavour is great.

Affordable?  I think so.  Because I cram so much extra veg and stuff in the pot, I don't use much pasta.  Maybe a quarter cup at most.  And as for the additional ingredients, when I do the purely store bought stuff, I use two sundried tomatoes, half a teaspoon of capers, quarter teaspoon of chopped olives, and a few drops of spicy rooster.  Unless I have some other protein in it, I use about two tablespoons of cheese.  Somewhere between 50 cents and a dollar for a hearty meal.  Include leftovers and garden veg, replace some of the pasta with pre-cooked chickpeas, and the price plummets.  

Healthy?  That all depends on what gets tossed in the pot.  I use wholesome and simple ingredients, most of which were living plants just prior to cooking.  Of course I'm sure there is a way to make this unhealthy, but you would probably have to try really hard.  

I think this would be great for camping.  One dish, everything tossed in together: This really should be called pasta pottage.

How about allergy friendly?  A simple un-recipe like this is very simple to modify for dietary needs.  Chances are the pantry is already stocked with things you can eat, and probably also things you like to eat.  It's just a matter of going to the cupboard and finding something good.  By the way, pickles taste great in this for some weird reason - if you can find a pickle you can eat.

I think this is a fantastic dish for making use of local resources and therefore a great transitional food.  Of course when the balloon goes down, or up, or whatever they say, I imagine that dry pasta would be harder to come by as it's manufactured and shipped from far away.  But when that happens we can go back to the more traditional pottages of beans with a smattering of fresh pasta tossed in at serving time.

 

Medieval Goose - two ways over an open fire

You remember Henry and William?  Two lovely geese I raised by hand from (not so) tiny eggs.

Maybe squeamish people should click away now, as this post involves processing and consuming my lovely boys.  But in a good way.  A very good and fulfilling way, with friends and free flowing mead.  It's been difficult gathering my feelings and thoughts to write about it, but I want to share the experience with you, if you'll let me.

Once a year I travel to the 14th Century for, what passes as a vacation.  A wonderful week or two among friends, dressed in funny clothes, eating medieval food, doing medieval things.  Living life just as they would in the year 1371, only we do it with potable water.

Things are never quite that simple, because while we are living a medieval life, we are also an interactive display for the public.  Visitors wander in and out of our camp while we cook, eat, spin yarn, weave, cast metals, practice combat... and all the regular day to day tasks correct for our period.  It's great fun interacting with them and showing off what we are doing.

A setting with good friends and a chance to educate random people about food and food choices - what  Pastafarian could pass up an opportunity like that?  So I brought my geese to the park, early one morning.  While The Captain and I hugged our feathered friends, they met their end.  I cried.  A lot.  But their end was just the beginning.

Plucking pheasants geese

As the day progressed a whole host of helpers plucked the larger of the two birds as we prepared him for roasting on the spit.  The smaller fella we skinned.  That took most of the morning, and some fun rhymes about pheasant pluckers and their sons.

With the smaller goose, we made a soup.  I carved off the meat and put to one side.  A broth was made from the bones, onions, carrot leaves and a few other tidbits that were kicking about.  After a few hours, we strained the broth, added it to some lightly fried veg, spices and the rest of the goose meat.  Delicious.

Goosefat

Not the most appetizing of photos, but very interesting for someone like me who hasn't worked with goose before.  First thing I noticed is how colourful the bird is under it's skin.  The yellow chunky bits are fat.

Fats of all kinds were highly prized in the middle ages, especially in Northern climes where there were very few sources of vegetable oils.  Fat was used to make soap, lotions, lighting, cooking, lubrication for wagon wheels, and many other things.  As we know now, fat is essential not just to make you feel full when eating, but also for brain development, skin, Vit D processing, and so many other things.  I had often read that goose fat was the most valued fat of all, but I never realized why before.

Unlike lard or tallow, when rendered, goose fat is liquid at room temperature.  It was quick and easy to render, especially because it's easy to see and trim the fat thanks to the natural colour coding inside the goose.  There is a lot of fat inside a goose!  It's also quite a mild taste, a lot like olive oil with a slight meaty undertone.  Very neutral flavour.

The roasted goose was much easier to process.  Just clean out the innards, trim some of the fat from the cavity, stick a stick in it and put it in front of the fire, turning from time to time.

"Is that a real goose?"

While we are working with the geese, the public flows in and out of the kitchen area and I talked with them about what we were cooking.  This probably the best part of the week for me.  I love hearing people's questions and listening to their stories.  Although, while working with the goose... things were a bit different.

The most common question of the day was, "Is that a real bird?"

The first few times I heard someone ask that, I wondered why we would be plucking an unreal bird?  What would an unreal bird look like?  How would it taste?

After a while, I decided (or at the very least hoped) they meant was, is it something that comes wrapped in plastic from a store or a bird we were in the process of transforming from live to dinner.  

Not surprisingly, many of the people were taken aback when they discovered what we were doing.  They had never seen anything like it before.  Even avid meat eaters didn't know what to make of it.

So I told them the story of the geese and how they came to be there.  I described how I hatched the eggs, raised the geese by hand, loved them and gave them a fulfilling life.  I shared how honoured I was that these geese would provide sustenance for us, and how we would honour them by making certain not a scrap would be wasted.  And most importantly, I talked about the difference between modern day methods of raising meat and the way it was done in the Middle Ages.  In the past meat was an infrequent luxury - and still is for most people who live on this planet today - so no part would go unused.  If we are going to eat meat, in our society today, we have the luxury of choice - we can choose to eat an animal who lived a miserable confined forcefed existence, or we can choose to eat fewer animals; ones who lived in a manner most true to their nature.  Why is it so many people proclaim they care about animals, but still buy miserable-meat?

I like to believe I got people thinking about what they eat when they eat meat.

Chowing Down (as in goose down... well, I tried)

Goose soup, goose livers and hearts fried in goose fat, and roast goose.  Add rice and a few veg to the mix and ring the dinner bell.

Everything was delicious.  We toasted the geese with homemade mead.

I don't know how to say this but while I ate, I was both incredibly sad and unbelievably joyful.  I was sad (and still am a little inside) because I'm always sad when one of my animals comes to an end - be it for food reasons or others.  These animals become my friends, even though I know that they will be food some day - I'm determined to give them the best life I know how.

But like I said, I was also joyful.  Amazingly so.  Enjoying the meal with my medieval friends was uplifting. I felt they honoured the lives of my animals - that it wasn't just meat to them.  It was sustenance, both of body and soul.

I'm losing the thread of what I was saying, but I doubt many people read to the end of a post this long.  Basically, what I am looking to say is: despite my conflicting emotional state, I am glad this happened.  I would do it all again  if it meant sharing a meal with these lovely people.  In fact, I already have a flock of replacement geese.  Between educating the public, learning new skills, and enjoying time with my friends, it was a very successful day.

Iron Age Cooking - A day with Project Germani

I had the good fortune to spend a day with Project Germani.  They are a small but growing group of people who enjoy demonstrating what it was like to live in the Iron Age.

Most of the members are high school students who are still getting use to the idea of cooking for a group.  So they asked me to come along and help them do some cooking.

Together we made oatcakes, always a yummy and popular treat.  Then we had a look in the cooler which was full of an interesting, albeit eclectic, selection of foods.  There were lentils and pot barley, but also mustard and ketchup, radishes and kale.  I felt like being thrown into an episode of Chopped with no access to pantry and fridge.

With no real plan, we set to work soaking the barley.  Without any meat to include in the stew, we decided to toss in the lentils too.  As we were feeding a bunch of teenage boys, we definitely needed the extra protein from the lentils.  Protein and fat help them feel full, and the carbs from the barley help give them long term energy.

Once the lentils and barley were soaked for an hour or so, we par-boiled them in a pot over the fire.  Drained the water, and added chicken broth, turnips, beet, some butter, and a bit of salt.  Let simmer over the fire until the root veg were tender, adding more broth as needed.  Then it was time to make some greens.

Got some people cutting up greens, which included the kale, and the radish tops, and an impressively large amount of parsley.  Cooked it in butter, stirring frequently until wilted enough.   Served it on top of the stew.  Yummy!

I say 'we' but really it was them that did the work.  I just sort of asked questions about what they wanted, and suggested the method that would work best with the ingredients and cooking facilities.  They did a fantastic job!  It also turned out to be a much healthier meal than I expected from teenagers.  Well done guys!

It was great fun hanging out with them and learning about what life was like two thousand years ago.  My favourite part was learning about the different tools, especially the knives, they used during that time.  This also seems to be a time when there was a lot of interaction between cultures, which is always exciting.  Not just because they traded/acquired forcefully tools and objects, but also the more subtle exchange of culinary traditions, movements of ingredients between cultures, and how it affects the cooking and agriculture practices of the different peoples.  It's very different than the time I've spent in the 14th Century when the culture in Europe was far more uniform.

Vegetarian Vindaloo while camping

Having been camping twice now this summer, I have discovered that after being outside all day, even on a hot day, it is really nice to have a warm and wholesome dinner.

For the group I made vegetarian vindaloo with sourdough bread (both nettle and regular sourdough), home made wine sauerkraut and cucumber salad.  

The vindaloo included onions, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and chickpeas.  The cucumber salad - my personal favourite - was cucumbers, shallots, salt and white balsamic vinegar.  The most difficult aspect of this was to make something that everyone could eat - we had quite a collection of allergies in our group.

It worked out to be $3 per adult - which was a bit steep I admit.  However, I used organic veg, not all of which were in season, and when you factor the salads and the spice mix into the price, it adds up quickly.  

This time I made the curry (with help from The Captain) the day before heading camping, packed it in a big giant bucket, and then heated it up on site.  Next time, if I make it in advance like this, I will store it in two or three smaller buckets, and only heat up one at a time instead of the whole thing at once.  That way if people don't want it all, then it's easier to keep it for lunch the next day.

Camping menu idea, or Will cook for ride share.

Camping, perhaps one of the weirdest things in the world.  People actually choose to sleep, away from home, in the wild, with a thin wall of cloth separating them from whatever rats or larger monsters lurk in the darkness.

But, then again, so long as I can bring along my trusty pots and pans, I can use it as an excuse to cook some very nice food for myself and others.

In fact, I got out my camping stoves the other day and started practicing cooking on it.


The first stove I'm brining is an alcohol stove for boiling water.

Basically the kettle is too small for the stove, so I used a metal trivet to stabilize it.  Should be good for boiling water for coffee  tea or doing the washing up.


I absolutely love this stove. It's a little butane stove, like the type you find in dorm rooms.  It has excellent temperature control and a very sturdy base, but I do wonder if it's going to be a bit too windy for it.

Other than it's a delight to cook with, the thing I like best about this stove is it has a lock/unlock feature for the butane gas canister.  Although pretty obvious when you think about it (it's the lever that has the words 'lock' and 'unlock' written beside it), most prying hands (of the child and adult variety) can't figure out how to turn on the stove when the gas is disengaged.  One canister lasts roughly 2 to 4 hours.  So, I figure one canister per day and one for luck ought to do it.


As for food, I'm hoping to keep the cooking simple, costs down but get the best results.

Here's my tentative menu work in progress at the moment.

Day one, drive up in the late afternoon

Snacks for dinner, probably onigiri (rice balls with filling) which are light but wholesome.  We will be tired from driving and setting up camp, so don't want to make anything too fancy.  Possibly BLTs instead.   Some grapes make nice car eating food.

I would love an idea for dessert once camp is set up, perhaps something with fruit.  Wonder if I can make a fruit crumble on the stovetop... (runs off to try it).

Day two, busy but relaxed

Breakfast: Sourdough pancakes with Strawberries in balsamic glaze.  Maybe a banana.

Price... about $1 per person for the pancakes, another $2 each for the toppings (I'm taking a small bag of organic flour instead of using my regular stuff, that ups the price quite a bit).  So, not the cheapest meal in the world, but easy enough to make.

Time - make the strawberries first, then heat griddle while mixing batter.  keep the pancakes covered with a towel as they come off the stove, and by that time, the strawberries should be ready.

Lunch: Ploughman's  sandwich.  Onion marmalade, cheese, lettuce,  butter and  bread.  Put some cold cuts and maybe a tomato or two on the side.

Price - about 20 cents each for the bread, another 5 cents for the onion, cheese is the main expense ... &c.  Probably $1.50 to $2 per plate.

Time - onions can be done in advance, but are better fresh and take about 30 min to make.  While the onions cook, I can assemble the rest of the ingredients and create a build your own sammie situation.

Or I could just do bread, cold cuts, cheese and veg, which is basically no cooking - and seems more and more likely at this point.

Dinner: Lamb Curry and flatbreads.  Really looking forward to this one, as it's one of my current favourite meal.  Add some cucumber salad for more veg and freshness.

price - 2 people only need about 1/4 lb meat.  so that's about a dollar, plus the tomats, potats, carrots, and onion, another 2 dollars.  Sauce, bread &c.  Cucumber salad, lets say a dollar.  About $5 or $2.50 per plate

Time- About an hour and a half.
Make the bread dough and leave to one side covered. Fry the onions while preparing the other veg.  add veg for a min to get them started, then brown the meat, add the sauce, add the tomats and wine/water, then let simmer.  After half an hour, roll out the flatbreads, remove curry from burner, heat griddle and cook flatbreads.  Wrap breads in towel to keep warm.  Put curry back on burner and bring up to boil.  Serve.

Day three, going home day

Breakfast, sigh same as yesterday.  Hope she doesn't mind terribly.  But I really hate breakfast as a rule, and this is about the only thing I feel like eating or cooking.

Lunch, cold cuts, bread, lettuce... basically any leftovers and some bread.

Snacks for the drive home.



Speaking of snacks.  I'm thinking scones or workman's cake (like a pound cake) make a good quick energy thing.  Apples, cured meats, crackers, &c.  That should be more than enough.

Emergency food: Broth Cubes.  Just add warm water (hot is better).  Makes an awesome start to all sorts of meals, like bread soup (broth, butter and bread - a thousand times tastier than it sounds.).  Also a good chunk of bacon - It's home cured and extra smoked, so it's quite shelf stable.  I'll probably pack it frozen in one big chunk though, just in case.

My goal was to minimize the amount of stuff I need to keep cool (finish it up by the end of Day 2), as most of the cold cuts I hope to bring are shelf stable at room temperature for a few weeks.


So... if you were going camping, would you enjoy this menu?  Or more to the point, would you enjoy having someone else cook this for you?   I know it's not hotdogs and marshmallows  but it is good wholesome food that I enjoy making.