Friday night Italian

Ok, so clearly I had better up my game. Toby has moved into fully fledged food photographer mode whilst I have nothing to show for my last few week's culinary efforts.

Until now... Friday night Italian (with a little help from the French - I couldn't find an Italian to pose with the linguine but I found a handy Frenchman to fill in instead).

A little salad of nectarines, mozzarella, rocket, Parma ham and pine nuts to start.

This is construction cooking at its best. There is no real cooking to speak of at all in fact. If you really insist you can toast the pine nuts in a frying pan. Beware ! They "turn" very quickly and before you know it your teeny bag of fearfully expensive pignoli may be a lot darker than you intended. As for the rest, a small amount of slicing, a bit of scattering, some slooshing (of your best olive oil and balsamic vinegar) and you're all done and ready to move onto the next course : crab linguine.

The ingredients' list is gloriously short: linguine (De Cecco or similar), a pinch of dried chilli, one clove of garlic, a tin of crabmeat, a handful of rocket or flat leaf parsley and one lemon.

Boil masses of salted water in your biggest pan. (I lived in Italy for a while and was always amazed to see pans that I would have only used for a stew for ten being hauled out on a nightly basis for spaghetti for two.) Whilst the linguine is cooking, slice the garlic finely and add it with a pinch of dried chill to a hot frying pan with some olive oil. When it's golden, add the crabmeat, some finely chopped lemon rind, the juice of the lemon and warm gently. When the spaghetti is cooked drain it, keeping about a tea-cup full of the cooking water. In your huge pan mix together the linguine, the rocket, a good sloosh of olive oil and of the cooking water, plenty of salt and pepper and your warmed crab mixture.

Eat whilst drinking the crispest, coldest white you can find and listening to Italian pop music. Or at least that's what I do...

Kate, Paris, 14th June

Midweek BBQ

So, the sun continues to shine, friends are coming over, what can be achieved in 90 minutes after work?  Well, still not flipping burgers or sausages. So...

Half shoulder of BBQ lamb, again, cooked indirectly, with the coals on one side, and the meat on the other, with the lid on the kettle for maybe 50 minutes.  I make deep cuts in the meat to get the spice rub in and to make it easier to cut.

The rub is similar, whatever takes my fancy really, but it doesn't need the sugar that was on that delicious chicken, lamb is fatty and will caramelise anyway. Today's rub was heavy on paprika which gives a lovely colour.

Special sauce is the house favourite with this lamb, and it's so good I'm a bit loathe to give it away...lets just say that anchovies, capers, a little mustard and a little chilli really super charge a mint sauce!

As ever, I think the BBQ side dishes should be the stars really, and people are all the more impressed if you can manage more than iceberg lettuce...

Brown rice salad. Not chosen for healthiness, that's just a convenient by-product, but for the nuttiness, it's really nice cold like this. Honest. I roasted some butternut squash and cauliflower with cumin, and tossed them with the rice, pistachio nuts and lots of parsley. A fruity vinaigrette with tahini ties it all together.

Collapsed tomatoes with anchovy dressing. So, quartered tomatoes, some thyme and half an hour in a warm oven go soft and sweeter, while still holding their shape.  The dressing sounds overpowering but pound the fish with garlic then add oil and maybe a bit of lemon juice and season to taste, and you have a colourful, zingy and bold, salad dish. Loads of basil on top. Does not taste of fish!

Homemade humus. A blender, some pulsing of the ingredients and you're done. Honestly there's no excuse not to...some nice hot peppers spice this up a treat.

So, with the cooking, turning the meat, but only a couple of times, that's pretty much my ninety minutes up... No pudding then?

Frozen fruit salad

I have to thank Danny Baker's radio show for this idea. They were discussing why there isn't grape ice cream...

Freeze grapes and you get something like a sweet sorbet, in it's own convenient container.  I was blown away when I first tried it, so this time did the same with some kiwi. I guess it would work with any wet fruit.  

So frozen grapes, frozen kiwi and then dressed with fresh passion fruit (not frozen). It's fruity, and almost creamy with the contrast of the rich passion fruit...amaretti biscuits on the side.  A standout desert in less time than it would take to scoop ice cream from a tub!

Toby, Hampshire, 7th June