comfort food
Depressed that the back to school weather didn’t materialise and we are definitely not getting an Indian summer this year, it was time for some comfort food yesterday evening after the torrential rain of the day. The wind was whipping around Dun Laoghaire to such a degree yesterday that a sturdy hook handle umbrella I was using blew inside out. I turned it the right way in again but about twenty steps up the pavement something happened that I have never experienced before. The metal fell out of the umbrella. All of it. Into a neat pile on the pavement. I stopped to pick it up and wondered what to do with the umbrella, thankfully, there is a skip near work that I was able to dispose of it in. I got thoroughly soaked thanks to the disintegration of the umbrella.
So anyway, comfort food.
Chirizo and red pepper pasta bake.
1 red pepper, 1 chirizo sausage
half a packet of bunalun pasta
boil the pasta.
chop the sausage and pasta, throw into a saucepan
fry the pepper and sausage, no need to add oil
when the sausage is cooked (and all the lovely oils are a nice orangey mess at the bottom of a saucepan), throw in two dessert spoons of flour. Stir around for a few minutes to cook the flour. Cooking the flour sounds daft, but you have to stir it around for a few minutes.
Add a little mile. milk. Stir to get all the lumps out of the flour.
Keep adding milk until you think you will have a thin mixture that you think will be enough for all the pasta.
Grate some cheddar and keep stirring the milk and chorizo and pepper mixture.
Bring up to almost a boil and keep stirring until it thickens a bit.
Drain the pasta and stir into the sauce.
Place in an oven proof dish, cover with some grated cheese and put in the 180 degree oven.
Bake while you make a cake.
Make a cake.
100grams of butter, melt over simmering water
2 eggs, medium
100grams of sugar, I used a mixture of demerara and muscavado
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
100 grams flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
while the butter is melting, whisk eggs and sugar together until fluffy and aerated.
mix the butter and vanilla into the sugar and egg mixture
mix in the flour (which is sifted in) and the baking powder.
turn into a greased, floured loaf tin.
retrieve some blueberries and raspberries from the fridge and throw into the cake mixture.
put the cake in the oven and remove the pasta bake.
eat the pasta and bake the cake for about thirty minutes, all ovens vary and just wait until it turns golden and a knife comes out clean from the centre. leave to cool in the tin. then turn onto a plate and leave upside down as all the fruit will have sunk to the bottom of the cake.
Enjoy in uncharacteristic eating fashion - on the couch watching tv rather than the usual at the table. Moan about the weather. Whine about all the rain.
