This week's colour is GREEN!  Really! There are so many natural ways to colour your food. I wanted to make some really green pasta, my initial straight forward green ingredient for the pasta was spinach. However, I wanted to use a plant that not only provide the colour but also add flavour to the pasta. 

I tried using coriander, but the result was not as expected. Lovely flavour, but it was not as refine and the coriander seemed to be a bit too "juicy" for the pasta making! So for my second attempt, I used parsley as the green ingredient.
It worked well, but not as fragrant as the coriander.

For the pasta, I mix 1 egg and 2 generous tablespoonful of the finely minced parsley (stalks and leaves) with 110g plain flour. Combine all ingredients well with a fork. When the dough come together (a bit sticky initially), knead with your hands and add more flour (one handful at a time) until the dough is smooth and elastic. 

Divide the dough into many smaller balls (if using rolling pin) or if you have a pasta machine (lucky you!) then you can just rolled them through the machine as you would normally do! Once done, cut the thin pasta sheet into smaller strands, and set aside to let it dry for a little while. 

I thought  the parsley in the pasta should complement well with minced lamb, so I made some simple minced lamb sauce to go with the pasta. Once you have prepared the sauce, cook the pasta in boiling water for 2 or 3 minutes and drain. Add the pasta to the lamb sauce and coat the pasta throughly.

Serves hot with finely chopped red chilli as garnish. Beautiful!

Enough of playing with food today! I am very full from eating and tasting too much!

YUM YUM YUM!

If I tell my little nieces and nephew that I cooked a rabbit...I think they will cry! 
Some supermarkets used to have rabbit on their selves, but I have not notice them for a long time. Wandering at the local butcher yesterday, I thought a whole rabbit for £2.99 is rather cheap! I thought maybe I can make a Ragù sauce and share this dish with a friend, but then I thought maybe eating rabbit is not really everyone's cup of tea! The taste and texture of rabbit meat is actually quite similar to chicken!

I made up this "Ragù" recipe myself, probably not an authentic Italian way! But it tastes quite good..and quite simple to make too..

Ingredients:

1. Whole rabbit (washed and cut into large piece or just half) 

       (I saw dead rabbit with fur and skin on at the butcher, but I don't think it is a good idea to get one of those!)

1. 3 Large carrots (peeled and cut to chunks)
2. 2 Large onions (roughly chopped)
3. 1 Bulb of garlic (separated with skin on)
4. 1 Stalk of leek (sliced in chunks)
   
5. 1 Whole red chilli (with seeds)
   
6. 1 Package closed chestnut mushroom (roughly sliced into large  pieces)
7. 6 Large fresh tomatoes (cut into quarters)
8. 2-3 tbsp Oilve oil
   
9. 2 Sprigs rosemary
10. 500ml Alcohol-free pear cider (alcohol version could be nice too)
    
11. A bunch of spring onion
    
12. Large bunch of flat leave parsley (roughly chopped)
    
13. 2-3 tbsp Tomato paste
14. 1 Zest of a lemon
15. Juice of half a lemon
16. 1 tbsp Smoked paprika
17. Salt and pepper to taste
    

Process:
Pre-heat the oven to around 160'C -170"C.

In a deep cooking pot, fry the garlic, onion, leek, rosemary and some of the spring onion in the hot oil until soften. Add the rabbit pieces and fry until lightly brown and the sauce is lightly caramelised. Season with generously with salt and pepper.

Remove the rabbit pieces from the pot and set aside. Add the carrot, chilli, mushroom and fresh tomatoes into the pot and fry for 5 minutes until the tomatoes are soften. 

Arrange the rabbit pieces back into the bottom of the pot. Pour the pear cider to cover all the ingredients. Lid on and bring the liquid to a boil. 

Remove the pot from the stove and put it into the pre-heated oven and slow cook for at least 2.5hours (check occasionally). (Best do this dish in the evening) After switching off the oven, leave the pot in the oven overnight.

Once the pot is cooled in the oven, remove it from the oven. Take out the rabbit pieces and remove all the bones with your hand. 

Reunite the meat with the tomato and carrot sauce. Mix gently and re-heat the sauce. Add the paprika, tomato paste, lemon zest, lemon juice, chopped parsley and spring onion to the sauce and cook for furtherfew minutes until the sauce is heat through completely. Season it with salt and pepper to taste. 

A wonderful sauce for fresh pasta. A hint of spiciness with sweetness from the chilli and pear cider...mmmmmmm....

This is my first post in 2012! Relocated to Brighton last December, looking to do something different in my life! Maybe something food related...(quite obviously)

Bought a lovely cookbook "How To Make Bread" by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou from a local bookshop and now I am testing a few of his bread recipes. It is a very useful recipe book, detailed visual instructions and beautiful pictures by Steve Painter. You can clearly feel his passion of bread making and his willingness to share it with other people. 

The pizza dough takes 24hrs to proof, which is longer than other pizza dough recipes I have tried. So if you are in a rush or very hungry, this is not for you! 

I think, why order pizza from takeaway? Make it at home, it is so much fun and satisfaction! (I understand that you might not have the time or lazy or can't cook...) but really, nothing beats the homemade pizza. It is full of freshness! or you can order from me!

For the topping, I used sausage meat balls, thinly sliced onion, fresh chopped tomatoes, tomato paste with olive oil, mozzarella and some dried Ghormeh Sabzi mixed herbs.

Ps. I think it won't do any justice if I just copied Emmanuel's recipe on here. I would recommend you to get on hold of the book. It will be a good investment!

Pasta making attempt no 5: Just messing around with things! I am quite confident now to make my own pasta, 
with just rolling pin!

This time I added some dried coriander leaves, and few drops of truffle infused olive oil to the flour to make these
duck egg pasta! These ravioli filled with fried bacon and chopped shallots with tomato puree! Serves with wilted
rocket leaves, sprinkles of grated parmesan cheese and pepper.

Quite tasty actually! :)

OHH! My Italian food tutor just commented that " I am his worst pupil!" What is wrong with using coriander in pasta? 
It is a Mediterranean herbs!

** Disclaimer: This is by no means Italian pasta, just me messing around! :)

The "fight" of 2 Italians over my "not so proper" ravioli!
Stefano: pasta with coriander?????? Loong, u r my worst pupil! :-)
Loong: HAHA..is it wrong to use coriander?!Roberta: it's fusion pasta!!! hi hi hi looks delish again!!! why stop?!
Stefano: mmmh... maybe it's fusion pasta, sure it's not italian pasta, and I'm teaching making italian pasta... 
And, of course, i'm traditionalist, talking about food!
Roberta: well yes...being italian i know how italians never go away from "what the book says"...shame I think...
food is all about taste and experience and combining flavours...italians for example don't know much about 
combining sweet and salty which is the base for a lot of other cuisine (indian, japanese, chinese ...) ...
coriander is used on noodles andthe difference from noodles to pasta is....the name! (plus pasta was first 
made in china!) so I say...take the great tradition of pasta making and experiment!! I haven't taste coriander with pasta ever but...why not?
Stefano: Roberta, I'm agree with you: for exemple, I like sweet and salty in asian food... but Loong is my pupil 
about italian food, and I must say that coriander is NOT ALLOWED in italian pasta! Anyway, he can make pasta 
as he wants, on condition that he doesn't call it italian pasta! :-)
Roberta: hi hi hi italians are passionate about everything they do ...but they almost never fight...
they discuss!!! almost always with a glass of wine and a good plate of pasta in front...it's the deal!!!

Now that is what food can do! Ahh..it wasn't a fight, just a "discussion"

haha!

To all my Italian friends,

This is by no means an authentic attempt to make ravioli! I just wanted to see what I can do with my new pasta making skill I have just acquired!
These raviolis filled with chopped bacon, walnut and wild rocket leaves...
Any suggestions to make REAL ravioli, please write me a comment..

Thank you!

If not careful, one can easily be a pasta making addict. I think I am one now! So much fun to make everything from scratch, and the taste and texture of the pasta is SO much different from those bought from supermarket!

For this experiment, I used only egg yolks for making the pasta. 3 egg yolks for every 100g of plain flour.

The texture of this pasta actually quite similar to "mee pok"! This pasta has this Chinese wonton skin look too!

The second attempt of pasta making at home. I think I am getting better! This time the pasta is nice and thin. (Bear in mind, only with rolling pin!)

Just a small twist..with duck egg! As usual, 1 egg for every 100g of flour. There is 00 Grade Pasta Flour available in the supermarkets, but I have tested making pasta with various different types of flour. Experiment different ingredients is rather fun!

A lot of the recent posts were written a while ago. Now that I am going through all of my previous postings, I am going to over-write all the initial sequence of the date it was initially posted.

I love Italian food, the simplicity of it. The last two times when I was in Rome, I spent too much time and money wondering around the Trastevere Area...the ice cream...mmmm

This was the first attempt to make pasta at home. It was really FUN. I've never attempted to make pasta my own! Now I have an online Italian food tutor, Stefano, I will try to make some Italian food, the proper way!

This first attempt is not as nice looking as your shop-bought fresh pasta..for sure! But bear in mind that, I have no pasta making machine, so everything is "hand" made!

The ingredient is very simple. for every one egg, you use 100g of flour. Mix the ingredients together to form a dough and roll it out on a lightly floured worktop with a rolling pin, as thin as you can! Then cut it to "thin" strips.

Cook the pasta in boiling water for 2 minutes (with a bit of olive oil). For this trial, I have only added some tomato paste with some seasonings as sauce, as I wanted to taste the "raw" ingredient - the pasta....

The texture was nice, I think. A lot firmer then ordinary fresh or dried pasta you can buy from shops. But maybe that was a fault?!