Bear's Garlic Pesto

Wild garlic, ramsons, bear’s garlic….

Whatever you choose to call it, it is delicious and currently in season. In French they call it l’ail des ours (garlic of bears) as apparently this is a brown bear’s Achilles’ heel! Humans also love these wild, garlic flavoured leaves, which are edible and great to use in soups, salads, omelette etc.

Wild garlic is currently in abundance at the local fruits and veg market. Every stall seems to have a large basked of these bright green leaves. I have taken advantage of this and made a basic bear’s garlic pesto, half of which I keep fresh in the fridge and the rest I divide into smaller portion to freeze. There is just too much to use all at once and as the season is relatively short it is a nice way to enjoy bear’s garlic for weeks to come.

Click link  below for bear’s garlic pesto recipe:

ERIKA ALLISTON : BEAR’S GARLIC PESTO

• 1 1/2 large bunches of fresh bear’s garlic leaves (approx. 280 grams)
• 100 mL olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Generous squeeze of 1/2 a lemon

1. Wash & dry the garlic leaves and remove the stems
2. Using a blender coarsely chop the leaves, adding the leaves handfuls works best
3. Pour in the olive oil, blend
4. Finally add the salt and lemon juice, blend till smooth.
5. Store in a glass jar in the fridge and / or freeze portions for later use

Bear's Garlic Pesto

Eight friends and a pasta machine is a great recipe for a dinner party and a welcomed change to the standard fare of one exhausted host, slaving over a hot stove while the guests wait ‘patiently’ in the next room.

Weeks ago at Lucy’s wedding, Helen & Rich casually mentioned the steam oven in their kitchen. I’m not sure they were quite prepared for my overly enthusiastic reaction…. Imagine a fat kid on a lolly pop and you are getting warmer. So they suggested we come over for dinner and I said great, why don’t we all cook together.  Friends are always surprised by this idea, I think mostly because they have never done it. I grew up in a family where everyone, men and women alike, pitched in to make the meal. The talking, drinking and cooking together was half the fun.

When planning the cooking menu, I had to keep in mind that we were 8 in the kitchen and that the recipes should be vegetarian for Lucy While the steam oven was a great temptation, I put this on the back burner, opting for homemade pasta making – as I thought it would be a better idea for a large group.

And it was! We split into two teams ‘The Boys” versus ’The Girls”. Each was given the required ingredients and with a helping hand from yours truely made the pasta dough by hand. Lucy, Helen  & Rich were our master mixers, followed by Stu & Jen who looked like professional kneaders. Each dough went into a plastic bag, one marked with a ‘zizi’… go figure, the other a flower… I think it’s clear who was who here! While the dough rested for two hours we drank & talked while making pesto, lemon pecorino sauce, courgette-rosemary soup and an apricot tart.

It was then onto the linguine making. Flattening, feeding, folding, separating… by the end of the pasta making, the teams were so confident that Rob had upped the machine speed and they were all helping each other – it was a great success! Though it must be said that as we were two teams, and this was a competition, there was a winner and that was ‘The Boys’, whose pasta was just that little bit better. Jen said to me ‘before making this pasta toghether I would have thought – what’s the point? You can easily buy it fresh from the store … But after tasting the homemade version you quickly see there is no comparison’.

RECIPE :  SWEET PEA Blog

A basic recipe for fresh egg pasta for linguine

• 200 grams semolina flour (hard wheat durum flour / blé dur)  – see image
• 100 grams all purpose white flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 eggs (room temperature)
• 2 tablespoons water

PASTA MAKING TIPS: the rue of thumb is 1 egg for 100g of flour.  Semolina flour is essential; using only all purpose white flour will result in thicker, stodgier pasta… been there, done that, don’t recommend it! Rolled out pasta sheets dry very quickly so you will need to make the linguine right away, the tea towels help to keep the moisture.

RECIPE for my homemade tomato pasta sauce : click HERE !!!

1. Mix the two flours and salt together. Pour onto a clean surface and make a large, wide well in the centre
2. Crack the eggs into the well and whisk with a fork
3. With finger tips,  incorporate the flour with the egg. This takes time, don’t panic & the water will help.
4. Gradually add the water so the dough comes together.
5. Knead the dough for 5-8 minutes, until a nice uniform ball forms.* Dust with a little semolina flour if too sticky.
6. Wrap in plastic and leave on the counter for 2 hours. Do not skip this step.
7. Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Lay out one clean tea towel (dish cloth) and keep 4 others to the side.
8.  Generously flour the work surface with semolina flour. Take one of the four pieces of dough and pat it into a flat oval shape, pass it in the flour.
9. Put your machine on a wide setting  (ie N°2 for the kitchenaide). Pass the dough through.
10. Fold the rolled out piece of dough in half, flour it, re-pass it through the machine. Repeat this folding and rolling process 2 more times.
11. Now put the machine on a thinner setting  (ie N°4), re-flour dough and pass it through the machine.
12. Put the machine on a fine setting (ie N°6), re-flour and pass the dough through.
13. Place the long sheet of pasta on the clean dish cloth (tea towel) and cut into two shorter pieces, cover well with another tea towel.
14. Repeat steps 8 to 13 with the three remaining pieces of dough.
15. Once all the pieces are rolled out, then start making the linguine. Re-flour each pasta sheet and slowly pass it through the machine, re-flouring the cut strips before placing them in a dry container.
16. Cooking time for the linguine is only 2 minutes in boiling water. 

 *Kneading the dough develops the gluten in the flour, otherwise the pasta will be soft and lifeless when cooked.

There comes a time in every girls life where she has to face facts – that if ones beloved husband, boyfriend, fiancé (mine very much included in this list…) brother, partner, father, the list is long but distinguished here, has become an official OFFICE MOLE – one of those very dedicated, over achieving, hard workers, who should basically set up camp under their desk, you are going to have to join the ranks of those who triumphed over the work pile! It will not take an army, nor a city wide power shortage, you loosing your mind, or having a shout, all you need is your OVEN and a couple of ingredients.

Now the saying goes that you may be able to bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, but I can tell you – you can bring a hungry overworked man to the table and believe me he will eat!! The story is the same if the roles of the sexes are reversed. So if you are going to lure them out of their den, you need to make it worth their while. Which got me to thinking about an Italian dish my colleague Melissa made last year – one that had so much success that no sooner had she placed the platter on the table but the dish was clean. I figured that this would do the trick.

My first attempt at RICOTTA STUFFED PASTA SHELLS,produced a dish that while savoury, was a little dry for my liking and lack that unctuous creamy quality Italian cooking is so famous for. Melissa’s shells however are filled with three types of cheese which solves this problem. Like many cooks who are comfortable in the kitchen, she cooks by her nose and not necessarily by the book, so I had to invent my own proportions etc based on the ingredients she normally uses. Half the fun of cooking is the art of improvisation & personalisation!

RECIPE – SWEET PEA Blog

Stuffed Past Shells Ingredients:

• 35 conchiglioni rigati (large pasta shells N°126 from De Cecco)
• 125g ricotta cheese
• 125g cottage cheese
• 100g mozzarella cheese
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 250g fresh large leaf garden spinach
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• pepper
• 1 egg, well beaten
• 80g of Gruyere cheese to sprinkle over shells before baking

Homemade Tomato Sauce Ingredients:

• 400g chopped tomatoes (or 1 1/2 cans)
• 4 generous tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 a medium white onion, finely chopped
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 2 dried laural (bay) leaves
• 1 whole clove
• 2 cardamon pods
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, pepper to taste

TOMATO SAUCE:

Prepare the tomato sauce FIRST!

Start by finely chopping your tomatoes & then onion and set aside. Now in a sauce pan, heat the olive oil on medium heat. Add the laural leaves, clove and cardamon pods and cook for a minute. Now add the onions. Let cook until unions turn soft and translucent. Now add the minced garlic.

Next add the chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper. Stir well. REDUCE the heat to low and leave to simmer gently for at least 10 minutes so that most of the excess water from the tomatoes has evaporated. Set the sauce aside.

COOKS TRICK : If you are using out of season or canned tomatoes & find your sauce a little sour, you can always add a sprinkle of white sugar!!

STUFFED SHELLS:

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F

SHELL preparation: Fill a very large saucepan 3/4 full with water. Add two generous teaspoons of salt and bring to the boil. Now add your pasta shell and cook for 5 minutes. Drain the shells rinsing them well with cold water and set aside.

SPINACH preparation: Wash the leaves well and remove the stalks. Place in a large heat proof bowl. Wilting : Boil 1L of water in a kettle and then pour over the spinach leaves. Cover well and leave to stand for 5-10 minutes until the leaves have wilted and are soft. Drain the spinach, removing as much water as possible. Now cut the leave up into small pieces and set aside.

FILLING preparation:Chop the mozzarella into very small 1/2cm cubes and place in a large mixing bowl. Next add the ricotta & cottage cheese, minced garlic clove, nutmeg, salt, pepper, chopped spinach, and beaten egg and mix very well.

STUFFING shells: You will need about 30 of the shells you cooked. Line the base of a oven safe cooking dish with a thick layer of the tomato sauce. Now take the shells one by one and using a small teaspoon fill to the top with the cheese/spinach filling, and place on the bed of tomato sauce with the cheese side facing up.

Grate the Gruyere (or cheddar) cheese and sprinkle over the top of the shells. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 20-30 minutes.

NOTE: an alternative method is to make twice the sauce and to cover the top of the shells with sauce and then sprinkle with your desired cheese (mozzarella, Gruyere, cheddar) and then bake.