Damien Miller's weblog

This is a nice artichoke pasta sauce that I have been cooking recently. It serves 4 hungry people. I use a wok to sauté the mix, but a deep frypan would do.

Ingredients

• 2 large brown onions
• ~350g jar of marinated artichoke hearts
• ~1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 sprig garlic
• 4 small chilli peppers
• 2 cans diced organic tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons pepper
• 1 cup finely chopped Italian (flat leaf) parsley
• 2/3rds cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

1. Separately chop garlic and onions finely
2. Finely chop chillis, remove seeds
3. Add oil to wok and heat
4. Add garlic and chilli and cook until the garlic starts to turn golden (don't let it brown!)
5. Add onions and pepper, sauté until the onions go soft (maybe add a splash more oil here)
6. Chop artichoke hearts into ~1.5cm chunks and add once the onions are soft, cooking until they soften too
7. Add diced tomatoes and bring to boil
8. Cook for 10-15 minutes (now is a good time to start to cook the pasta)
9. Add parsely and parmesan
10. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring thoroughly

This is pretty heavy on the garlic. If you don't like it so much, you can use 1/2 a sprig or fry it longer at the start. This sauce is fairly thick so it goes well with farfale, fusilli or campanelle pasta.

Update [2007/11/25]: I have since found it better to sauté the artichoke hearts rather than boiling them.

posted at: 08:41 | path: /cooking | permanent link

I have been trying to improve my (terrible) cooking skills recently, by cooking some very basic recipes until I get them right. So far the only one that has worked first time is the following recipe for red lentil soup. My attempts at making carrot cake have turned out tasty, but rather too dense, and it took a couple of attempts and lots of wasted eggs before I could reliably make Hollandaise sauce (tip: use a very low heat when adding the egg yolks to the butter).

This recipe makes enough lentil soup to feed a small army, but I prefer to make bulk soup because it freezes so well. The recipe does scale very well, so you might want to simply divide by 4 or 5 if you are only cooking for a few people. It is quite a hearty soup - very good for this cold winter.

Ingredients

• 4 large brown onions
• 1Kg carrots
• 5 cups red lentils
• 1.5 tablespoons turmeric
• 1/3rd cup olive oil
• 4 litres vegetable stock
• 1 litre water

Instructions

1. Chop onions finely, add to pan with olive oil and cook until soft
2. Add tumeric and stir through
3. Place the water and stock in a large pot, add the cooked onions and place on a high heat
4. Chop carrots finely
5. If you have any random vegetables lying at the bottom of the fridge, this is a good time to get rid of them - chop them up
6. Wash the lentils (wait until you are ready to add them to the stock, otherwise they will become sticky and clump at the bottom of the pot)
7. Once stock is gently boiling, add carrots, washed lentils and whatever you found at in your fridge
8. Boil until carrots are soft and the soup has thickened
9. Add salt to taste
10. Serve with natural yoghurt and Italian parsley

posted at: 12:36 | path: /cooking | permanent link