I rather like filing – the satisfying illusion that you can organise and control your life. It appeals to the librarian in me.
I’ve done less filing of late. My computer desktop is a creative mess, full of screen shots and mood boards and folders. A subject that consumes me is how to organise my massive collection of cookbooks? By colour coding, the alphabet, by size or by subject? What do you do?
I did buy a dymo label maker and spent a contented weekend polishing, rationalising and marking my spice collection: I’m keen to ‘file’ my food.
On my desktop I have an excel document where I tried to list every single vinegar ever but then my daughter said I was weird and it would be a boring blog post. Somewhere I have a citrus family tree table too. I’m interested in systems and relationships. Filing makes this clearer.
With this in mind, I’ve organised the whole of pasta and its sauces into five ‘families’.
Mushroom, cream and sherry spaghetti recipe
2tbsp olive oil
- Cook the spaghetti in a large pan of salted boiling water for 9 minutes. (Please use a large enough pan. It’s one of my bugbears, people squeezing spaghetti into too-small-pans. Likewise salad in too-small-bowls. Why? Just why. You can’t toss a salad in a teacup).
- In the meantime, take a large sauteuse (deep frying pan) or medium sized saucepan and start the sauce. (It needs to be big enough to add the spaghetti to it).
- Melt the butter, add the olive oil and fry the mushrooms for a few minutes. I used button mushrooms but use any mushroom you like. James Wong says Portobello mushrooms contains twice the amount of chitin, an immune boosting fibre.
- Add the garlic, stir, and the sherry, fry for one minute.
- Add the cream.
- Drain the pasta and add to the sauce.
- Season then add parsley.
Pasta Bites
Interesting. We did not eat this in the 70s in Napoli but I remember (ok late 70s are my memories) lots of penne with cream and smoked salmon (sooo luxurious!) or 'boscaiola' in restaurants which was made with peas, ham and mushrooms and of course cream.
PhoenixHunter
Sounds delicious and great for a quick crowd pleaser for visitors. Would it be a heinous crime if I added a handful of petit pois to recipe?
Edna Martin
Thanks for a great blog!