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How to make a Carbonara?

So, I was sitting in my kitchen “again” wondering aimlessly how my beloved wonder woman can do so many things at once and still produce a great meal that tastes great and just seems to appear from nowhere. Then a few weeks later at the MCC, Sensi declared that we’d be doing a quick one as it’d been a busy weekend. So this “quick one” turned out to be Carbonara, a slightly beefed up one for the MCC, but Carbonara nevertheless. And ay up by gum it were smashing. As it goes we went to see Borat afterwards so that should probably be – I liked, it was nice, Shenkui.

Anyway the ingredients for the MCC Carbonara are as follows

  • 2 medium sized onions, diced
  • 24 bits of streaky bacon, cut into strips
  • About 13 medium sized button mushrooms, sliced
  • 2 bags(1000g) of multi grain tagliatelle
  • 500 ml of Creme Fraiche
  • Parmesan, about the size of four fingers, grated!!!
  • Salt and Pepper
  • 4 Eggs
  • Olive oil

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Masochistic MAYONNAISE – at last

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to post up Sensi’s Mayo. We’ve actually made it twice, and I’ve even attempted it at home a few times to varying degrees of success. It’s one of those things that is so simple yet so hard to master (a bit like chess) that I’ve been putting off writing it up until I had it sussed. That is until now…

Find below the ultimate Mayo recipe as written by the girlfriends dad, he’s mentioned it to me before and I’ve even tasted it a fair few times, but the other day, Nick, finally reckons that he’s mastered it and offered up the recipe, it turns out we make masochistic Mayo, see what you think…

MAYONNAISE

Mayonnaise has nothing to do with Mayonne in France, but comes from a corruption of Mahon capital of Minorca.

As is usual, the food is produced from what the local house-wife has had to hand over the years. It has been internationalised, and corrupted, ever since.

Traditionally whisked by hand, this version uses the modern kitchen convenience of a food processor. Those who have time to spare and are of a masochistic bent may like to follow the ‘correct’ method given after the the ‘cheats’ version .

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Maximus Fruiticous Cous

Cous cous, rocks. This one was a bit of an experiment on Sensi’s part. We made it with the Pokey Pork and veggies a few weeks ago and although we all concluded that it could be improved it was pretty flippin’ good to start with. There’s just summat about adding fruit to cous cous that is so right.

Ingredients

  • About 20  grapes, sliced into small chunks
  • a good bunch of parsley, finely chopped
  • a punch of toasted pin nuts
  • olive oil
  • good pinch of salt
  • 1 “c” cup of cous cous

Add the cous cous, the grapes, half the parsley, the pine nuts and salt to a bowl. Add 2 seconds of olive oil (ensure bottle has a slow pour nozzle). Mix this together and cover with boiled water from a kettle. Then cover the bowl with cling film and leave to stand for 10-15 minutes. If unsure the water will have gone and the cous cous will have absorbed the lot…

Like I said in the beginning, this was an experiment, I think you could make this fruitier (I would though), maybe with apricots or similar.

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Pokey Pork

As part of our pseudo North African MCC yesterday, we cooked up a tasty loin of pork. I’m not sure if the majority of our North African readers are ever likely to eat pork, but the rest was quite authentic… 🙂 We made our own harissa which was amazing and formed the main flavour of this quick recipe.

Ingredients

  • Olive oil
  • Salt & Pepper
  • 2 tea spoons of harissa – we made ours, but Sensi says tinned harissa is pretty good too.

Grab a reasonable sized bowl and throw in 4 good sized pork loin slabs. Pour over 3 seconds of olive oil, add a proper grind of pepper and a punch of salt. Add in the 2 tea spoons of harissa and mix it all up making sure all of the pork is fully covered.

Leave the mix to stand for a bit and then get your grill onto full heat, we’re going to grill it “carefully”, so put the grill pan on the bottom of the grill. When the pork starts to brown turn it over. This took us about 15 minutes altogether.

When done serve up with some cous cous and some tasty veg.

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Spicy Pumpkin “Boo” Soup

The nights are drawing in, the clocks have changed and it’s darned cold. I sit here shivering, wearing a big coat and rather fetching fingerless mits. I look hugely attractive, I can tell you, hunched over my liitle keyboard, gleaning heat from the whirring mechanics of my machine. No better time for a thick, seasonal, spicey soup. And it is spicey. Trick or treat?

Ingrediants

  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 1 pumpkin (half the size of a football)
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 2 big leeks
  • 1 green chilli
  • 1 thumb of ginger
  • A punch of curry powder (madras, or whichever you fancy)
  • A pint of chicken stock
  • 2 dollops of sour cream
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Fabulotastic Falafel and A Yoghurty Minty Dressing

Are we becoming less manly at the MCC? There seems to be alot of food without meat in it and we all know that meat is manly. maybe there is something Sensi is not telling us. A deep dark secret that is trying to force itself to the top of the cooking agenda. perhaps he is collating a menu of vegetarian specialties so we can have our own stall at glastonbury festival next year. Well, ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die, as into the kitchen of Pat, rode the three blokes.

Ingredients

  • 250g (or a couple of D-Cups) of Dried Chickpeas (soaked overnight)
  • 5 garlic cloves
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 2 dollops of tahini
  • A punch of ground coriander
  • A punch of ground cumin
  • 1/2 bunch of fresh corriander
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • Salt and Pepper
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