Pasta. Honestly, I’m really rather over it. Too heavy, too stodgy, too much not enough fun. The Italian futurist Marinetti launched a campaign against pasta in the 1930s writing that “futurist cooking will be liberated from the ancient obsession with weight and volume, and one of its principal aims will be the abolition of pastasciutta. Pastasciutta, however grateful to the palate, is an obsolete food; it is heavy, brutalising and gross; its nutritive qualities are deceptive; it induces scepticism, sloth and pessimism”. » Read more: Two great vegetarian pasta dishes
Archive for the ‘Vegetarian’ category
Two great vegetarian pasta dishes
April 24th, 2010Mango rice with sweet curry sauce
January 10th, 2010My kids (currently aged 3 and 5) are pretty good eaters. This is certainly not to say that they will eat anything or everything that’s put in front of them but they are interested, enthusiastic and comfortable with a wide variety of flavours and ways of eating. We all eat together most nights of the week and by and large I haven’t altered my way of cooking terribly much since we became parents. Sometimes with more challenging meals, I’ll make an easier dish to go with it or make a separate kid-friendly version just for them. I figure that this way they can be introduced a wide range of food types without the pressure of having to eat a whole plateful of it. Food fear and pressure are unwelcome guests at our table. » Read more: Mango rice with sweet curry sauce
Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
November 4th, 2009I haven’t done much traveling, but since the kids were born we have managed to get to south east Asia a couple of times. Our first trip was to Siem Reap in Cambodia, the town outside the temple complexes of Angkor. I loved the Cambodian food – very delicate and fragrant and not too heavy on the “big” flavours of ginger, chili and garlic (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I also have to admit that I’m crazy for that whole Asian / European colonial thing – all amazing architecture, dark furniture and lazy ceiling fans which parts of Siem Reap have in abundance. Drinking huge iced glasses of sweet lime juice in the midday heat in this kind of environment is just my sort of decadence. » Read more: Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
November 3rd, 2009So mum and dad flew out to Singapore yesterday to stay with my brother. Dad is a south east asian stir fry master and in his absence I have kindly organised to babysit his favourite cookbook “Green Mangoes and Lemongrass” by Wendy Hutton and published by Periplus. Tonight I tried my first recipe out of this, a chicken stir fry with mangoes, cashews, snow peas and tomatoes. Basically it’s a very subtle and quite sophisticated sweet and sour and was very popular all around (most particularly with Alex (5) and I, I think). The pool of sauce at the bottom of the plate was an absolute sensation and finished with the taste of lime and black pepper which sent me straight back to Cambodia and memories of eating at a street stall in the pouring rain outside the Bayon temple. » Read more: Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
