Sunday 21 July -Trofie Pasta and The First English Cherries

A new Italian cookbook called Bocca Cookbook appeared in my kitchen, and the first page I opened showed a recipe for Trofie with potatoes, green beans and pesto. This sounded lovely and Summery, and also included instructions for making the pasta, so we decided to give this a go.

The Pasta was simply semolina and water -  I mixed it in the Kenwood using the dough hook as it's too hot for major kneading.

After resting the dough was shaped - there is a definite technique to doing this, and it took me a long time to get it!

 

Once the pasta was all shaped, it was left for half an hour to dry.

To serve with this, home made pesto - I've not made this myself for years, and the difference from bought pesto is incredible.

To serve, the pasta was cooked, and added to cooked green beans and new potatoes, and the pesto was stirred through. This was so simple, but probably the nicest thing we have eaten for ages  - I'd probably buy the pasta ready made for a midweek meal though!

 

 Summer is well and truly here, and we had also picked up the first English cherries of the year.

As the chickens are laying really well at the moment we had a surplus of eggs, so Clafoutis seemed the obvious thing to make here.

The cherries were stoned, and placed in the buttered tin and then the batter - similar to yorkshire pudding batter but with some sugar and vanilla added - was poured over, and it was baked.

This was served warm with some cream, and was absolutely delicious.