Nov 16 2008
Vegetarian Sunday Tea
Tonight we finally tackled a recipe which has been on the cards for months.
- Pappardelle with Escarole
- Clafoutis
Pappardelle with Escarole has been on the menu for sometime as an easy peasy vegetarian island in a sea of meaty recipes. However it has been off the menu for all of this time on account of it being nigh on impossible to source Escarole in Edinburgh. This lettuce is part of the endive family (Cichorium endivia var latifolia) and will in fact grow in Scotland- if only we’d thought when we first moved to this flat. It is possible we could have found one at Earthy but for my sins I’ve still never been there. I’d even had offers from friends to look for Escarole in London. In fact, it is so hard to find interesting lettuce in Scottish supermarkets or grocers that I couldn’t find any of the alternative lettuces that Nigella suggests.
The other day I spotted chicory in Waitrose, labelled as ‘also known as endive’. And I thought- that’s what I want! Turns out I was wrong. Same Genus, different species- chicory is in fact Cichorium intybus. Balls. Still, it seemed to work.
This pasta was interesting- undoubtably Italian- but not really to my tastes. It packed a potent chilli kick, which it needed seeing as it didn’t really taste of anything else. The white wine sauce was wetter than I would have liked and the parmesan melted together in big clumps. So while it looked fab at point of serving, and fitted the bill as a vegetarian main course, I don’t think we’ll be back here. If need be I’d be inclined to stick to a regular Spaghetti all´aglio, olio e peperoncino if I need something simple and meatless.
Clafoutis was a very easy pudding to make; mix it all together and off you go (cherries from a jar, so no stoning required). This is an express version, baked quickly at heat. It would have been pretty much perfect had I not put it too high up in the oven. It rose up and got stuck amongst the grill element. Oh No! Thankfully I was cooking for Dougal and my best friend from uni; a more sympathetic audience I don’t expect you’ll get so instead of swearing and weeping there was (swearing and) much laughter, as we used a wooden spoon to hold the top down as we pulled the dish from the oven. I’ve never ruined a dish so quickly!
Thankfully it hadn’t actually burned badly; once dusted with icing sugar who would know? However the wooden spoon shenanigans did mean it was in pieces on top, not exactly exquistite. However, once portioned up you couldn’t tell (sadly I didn’t take any portion sized pieces) and with a good slosh of cream (leftover from the over zealous allocation for the previous day’s Butterfly Cakes) this was cherry heaven. The recipe said this served 6-8. Technically I didn’t have enough cherries (I think I’d been planning on halving the quantities) but I felt the cherry to custard ratio was fine. We made it go three portions plus a second helping for two (four equal sized portions, in short). Heaven forbid this is restraint on Nigella’s part!!
I’ll do this again. Perhaps even as individual portions next time, for ultimate silliness?
You wouldn’t know it had been such a near-disaster from the pictures.
Clafoutis (proper) is still one of my favourite puds, though I think we forgot during the cherry season this year. Bah!
Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous at the moment we opened the oven, but it was salvaged quite quickly. If we’d left it longer with the oven off and the door open, it might have sunk in situ (which it did do once pulled out) and we might have had a lot less damage than even we did.
It managed to taste a lot like I rememberClafoutis tasting, and as such was most satisfactory and I quite wish we were having it again tonight. I don’t expect it would win out in a blind taste test though. Cutting corners only goes so far.