I usually make this when I have some stale bread and lots of parsley. Also when I have some leftover vinegar from a pickle jar. Waste not waste not!!

Soak the bread with the vinegar (if you don't have vinegar from a pickle jar use white wine vinegar - do not use dark vinegar!). Add one hard boiled egg, a few capers, and all the parsley you can find (stalks good too!). Blend. Add more vinegar if too thick, and also a little extra virgin olive oil. Add salt to taste and blend until smooth. Add a few more capers (whole) and petals and stir. I used Friarielli flowers (cime di rapa), nasturtium and borage flowers here. Leave some on top for decoration.

In Italy salsa verde is usually served with boiled meat, but as I don't eat meat I like it with boiled eggs, and also with bread, or as a dip.

So to honour his legacy I took out my pasta board and went out in the garden, (it was a lovely day), and made some tagliatelle. I even added some flowers to some, just for fun. To make pasta I just use an egg for every 100g of flour, this is good for two people, so double for 4 and so on. Since I have two teenagers I used 300g of flour and 3 eggs :-). 

Then I made a sauce, I had a big pack of dried porcini mushrooms which a soaked, and some other mushrooms, which I cut, and since I didn't have many I added some eggplant, cut and salted (to sweat). If you add eggplant to mushrooms it will absorb the flavour and the texture is a little similar so you can dream that you have lots of mushrooms. I sautéed the fresh mushrooms and eggplant with a little olive oil, chopped parsley and garlic cloves and then added the dried mushrooms and their water, a big bottle of tomato passata,  extra tomato puree and salt to taste. At the end I had a huge pot of sauce, even after I cooked the lot for one hour (to thickens the sauce), I used some for pasta the first day and for a pie the day after.

We had the tagliatelle and mushrooms with Parmigiano, and a glass of red whine, and toasted to Antonio. Goodbye Carluccio, sit tibi terra levis.

You don't need to do anything with the konnyaku except taking it out of the packet and slice it! For the veggies i steamed some cauliflowers florets and carrots (separately) and cooked some spinach. The spinach were rolled in a nori seaweed sheet (like a sushi roll, but with spinach instead of rice). For the dressing, usually I make this miso dressing, but this time I tried to make Nami's miso dressing, from Just One Cookbook, mostly because I have never tried to put rice vinegar in my dressing and I wanted to have a go! Nami, the only thing that I didn't put in here is the miring (didn't have any at home!) and my sesame seeds were already ground. But yes, it was delicious! Thank you!

Now, do you know how to make gomadofu? :-)

Max fascination with chili led him to do a science project last year (year 8), and it was very interesting for me too. He bravely tried different chilies several times over a course of a few weeks, looking for the best antidote to spiciness. He was very meticolous, repeating the experiments over and over and even asked some of his friends to try (not very successful here though). For each type of chili he checked how many tbsp of water, apple juice, milk, yogurt or rice were needed to take the heat off.


The juice experiment soon became the hardest, as he quickly worked out that sweet fruit juices don't work! Water didn't help much either, since the capsaicin compound is hydrophobic, but these were all things that he had to work out himself, rather than reading them in books. As to be expected the best antidote in the list was yogurt, followed by milk (just above rice, the only solid food in the experiment).

When I was living in London, over 20 years ago now, every eatery I went to (unless it was some sort of hippy/alternative/macrobiotic/ethnic restaurant) would have two hot veggie choices: vegetarian lasagne and cauliflower cheese. I am not joking: that was it! The vegetarian lasagne was usually frozen stuff, and it seems that most pubs and cafes ordered it from the same company (i.e. it always tasted the same!). The cauliflower cheese was either boiled cauliflower with cheddar melted on top, or baked cauliflower with a white sauce... and the consistency of porridge. Meat eaters pitied me and wondered why on earth I would choose to be a vegetarian. Things are different now, and there is more choice, but I am sure that lots of vegetarians still have nightmares about that bland 'cauliflower porridge'.

Anyway, here is a version that is not too cheesy (but you can add more cheese on top if you like), and tastes good. 

Cavolfiore al forno

Ingredients
1 large cauliflower, plus plenty of water and a pinch of salt
100 g salted butter
100 g plain flour
1 l milk
nutmeg
white pepper
salt to taste
100 g freshly grated parmesan cheese (or the cheese you like)

I usually remove the leaves form the cauliflower, then I wash it and boil it whole in a large pot with plenty of water and a pinch of salt. This way I make sure that it is not overcooked and mushy. Then I divide it into florets. 

For the sauce (Besciamella) melt 100 g of salted butter in a saucepan, then add 100 g of plain flour and stir. Add 1 l of milk slowly, stirring constantly without making lumps, then simmer until the sauce thickens. At the end add freshly grated nutmeg, white pepper, and salt to taste. Spread a little sauce in the bottom of a oven dish, then arrange the cauliflower florets on top. Cover with the rest of the sauce, banging the dish so that there are no air bubbles. Sprinkle with 100 g of freshly grated parmesan cheese and place in the hot oven for about 40 minutes, or until the top is golden. Serve hot. Easy!

Photos by Arantxa Zecchini Dowling ©

After 5 minutes I added the content of a can of finely chopped Italian tomatoes, and some more water from rinsing the can (another 400 ml).


I let the mushrooms simmer, covered, for about one hour (yes that long) until almost all the liquid was gone. It may seem like a long cooking time, but it is winter after all, and it is nice to have a pot simmering on the stove :-).


At the end I added some fresh parsley chopped with a clove of garlic, (about one tbsp in all). I served it with crescentine (as one of the fillings, usually I always have one hot filling for them), but it works well on polenta or pasta, or as a side dish, or as a pie filler.

When we were living in Japan my husband did a lot of editorial work for Kodansha International, and among the books he worked on there was this one: The Book of Soba by James Udesky. The book tells you how to make your fresh soba, but also how to cook the dry one, plus it has some recipes, some history and nutritional info. I like it.



This is my soba set: plates with fitting straw mats (zaru soba is served in baskets or on mats, to keep it fresh and drained), plus some matching soba dipping bowls. I also have some tea cups with the same pattern: dragonflies!


Zaru soba is cold soba topped with nori (I cut a sheet of nori in small pieces with a pair of scissor) and served with a simple dipping sauce and garnish. One thing that I learned form The Book of Soba is that soba is not cooked like pasta. The only thing in common with pasta is that you should use the biggest pot you have and have enough water as if you were to cook spaghetti. But don't add salt!

Bring the water to boil: add the soba, stir gently. When the water starts to froth add half a cup of cold water and lower the heat. Do this three times. After the third time your soba should be ready. Drain and collect the cooking water to make soup, if you like (full of starch and vitamins and minerals) and place the soba in a bowl with ice water. Or just rinse under cold water (I prefer this way, the soba may not be perfect but I cannot bear to loose anymore starch!



Place your cold and rinsed soba in a soba basket or on your soba plate (lined with the soba mat). If you don't have a soba mat use your sushi rolling mat. Top with nori. Here I put some daikon salad with ume mayo, and sesame capsicums on the side too, they are not traditional, they were just left overs from my Japanese cooking class, but they paired well with the cold soba.


For the dipping sauce I prepare a base broth by simmering a piece of kombu for 30 minutes in water, then I add a little soy sauce (most would use bonito flakes). Let the broth cool down: this is a cold dipping sauce. Before serving put a tiny bit of wasabi in each dipping bowls, and a little grated daikon or radish, and then some chopped spring onions or chives. Pour the broth over and stir. For a fancy dinner place all the garnishes in small plates and let your guests mix their own sauce. To eat pick up the soba with your chopsticks and dip into your dipping sauce, then slurp everything up. You can make a slurping noise too, but I am not good at that!