Cannelloni- with meat & cheese sauce

Cannelloni are big wide tubes of pasta about three inches long and an inch across. They are quite fragile and break fairly easily. They also split under the tension if the inside is wetted without wetting the outside at the same time, but unlike most pasta they are not cooked beforehand and then incorporated into the dish, they are cooked from dry in the dish. Basically cannelloni are stuffed with a moist filling, laid in rows in a shallow baking dish, covered over with a sauce and then baked in the oven. The cannelloni absorb water from the sauce and the filling during the cooking and become soft and cooked themselves.

You need a shallow oven dish for this, as well as an oven and a saucepan to make the sauce and stuffing in. Check you have enough cannelloni beforehand and that you can arange them in your baking dish so that it is filled from side to side and end to end- it is almost implossible to cut cannelloni so they can only be used whole.

The meat sauce- Salsa di Carne/ Sugo di Carne

First of all make a fairly stiff meat sauce. Start by colouring about a pound of minced beef in a little olive oil in a pan. Meanwhile peel and chop several cloves of garlic and an onion and add them to the mixture. Add a can of tinned tomatoes, roughly chopped and some pasata or tomato purée as well- one of the secrets of the way Italian food tastes is that they use a lot of tomato. Another secret is that they often put a good pinch of sugar in with the tomato as well. Season the meat sauce with salt and pepper and add some oregano. Adjust the liquid content but keep it fairly low- you have got to push this stuff inside the cannelloni later. Cook the sauce for about 45 minutes and set aside to cool somewhat.

Now make the cheese sauce. Start with a standard Besciamella sauce of a couple of ounces of butter melted in a pan, a dessertspoonful or so of plain flour mixed in and then about half a pint of milk added slowly over a gentle heat with lots of stirring to ensure no lumps remain. When you have the basic thickened white sauce, season it with some salt an pepper and put in a bayleaf to infuse it. Now remove it from the heat and add several ounces of grated cheese, a big mound of a cooking cheese like Cheddar. Stir it in furiously so it melts in the sauce and mixes with it.

Now take your Cannelloni tubes. It's a good idea to dip each canelloni tubes in hot water briefly before hand to try and avoid the cracking. Take each tube, push meat stuffing into it with you finger, and lay them side by side in the baking dish.When the baking dish is full, pour cheese sauce carefully over everything. Make sure you don't leave any bare bits as these won't cook properly and you will get crunchy pasta which is not nice. Sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese over the top and bake in a low- medium oven for about an hour. Make sure you extract the bayleaf before you serve.

Cannelloni- Spinach & Ricotta stuffing with tomato sauce

This is another version of cannelloni, which is suitable for vegetarians with a stuffing made from spinach, Italian cream cheese & pine nuts, and a tomato sauce over.

The tomato sauce- Salsa di Pomodori

To make a straightforward tomato sauce: Peel and finely chop several cloves of garlic and a large onion. Soften the onion and garlic in a pan in some good olive oil. If you have it, finely chop a blade of celery and add it to the pan. Finely grate a fresh carrot and add that as well. Chop a can of tomatoes and add them to the pan, then add some pasata as well. Add half a glass of white wine, season with salt and pepper, add a good pinch of oregano, adjust the liquid to a suitable consistency, cover and simmer for at least half an hour. If you have a liquidiser, then the tomato sauce is much improved by being put through it.

Meanwhile make the stuffing. Take about a pound of spinach leaves and pick them over, ripping out stalks and discarding any leaves that are yellowed. Wash the leaves in cold water thoroughly to get rid of any mud and grit, and shake out the excess water. Heat a big pan very gently and melt a lump of butter in it. Put in the heap of spinach leaves and heat them gently. As the heat reaches them they will suddenly wilt to a fraction of their size. Drain the excess liquid from the spinach, chop them roughly and put in a bowl. Grate over some nutmeg, and mix in about half a pound of ricotta cream cheese. Add a big handful of pine-kernels and break in an egg. Season with some salt & pepper and mix up the mixture well.

Now take your Cannelloni tubes. It's a good idea to dip each canelloni tubes in hot water briefly before hand to try and avoid the cracking. Take each tube, push spinach stuffing into it with you finger, and lay them side by side in the baking dish.When the baking dish is full, pour tomato sauce carefully over everything. Make sure you don't leave any bare bits as these won't cook properly and you will get crunchy pasta which is not nice. Sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese over the top and bake in a low- medium oven for about an hour.

Conchiglie & Pesto

Pesto is a powerful sauce that you can (if you know no better, and you haven't been paying attention up to now) buy in supermarkets in little jars. However, even the 'additive-free' varieties may be adulterated with cheaper ingredients and sterilised to enable them to keep. Fresh pesto is so much more pungent, clean and generally full of italian joie de vivre that the difference is truly stunning - and all it requires is a small amount of effort beforehand to make it yourself. In fact the difference is so powerful that, as with all recipes using raw garlic, you are probably better off making pesto at least 24 hours in advance, to give the flavours a chance to soften and sweeten a little.

Pesto is basically a powerful green basil and garlic sauce, with which to coat and flavour the pasta. If you grow basil in your garden, then all you need to do is to rip the leaves off by handfuls, otherwise you need to buy a pot of growing basil from your local supermarket, and then tear all the leaves off that. Either way, to do pesto properly you really need a lot of fresh basil leaves, chopped-up.

Begin by smashing a clove of garlic in your pestle & mortar, preferably a really fresh & succulent clove. Make sure you crush it utterly (you really don't want any major chunks of raw garlic surfacing later on, unless like Scrote you are sad and have no-one to object). Add a handful of pine-nuts, mix in a grated a handful of parmesan (parmiaggiano) or peccorino cheese, and follow it up with the mass of basil leaves. Crush all the ingredients together into a rough paste, and then top up the mixture with good olive oil until it is well covered. When you are happy with the green mess you have produced, pour it into a jar and seal it. You now have- pesto. You need to keep it in the fridge (because it fresh), and it will not keep for any longer than a week.

Conchiglie are pasta shells, but any reasonable small pasta will substitute. As with all pasta, the better the quality you can manage to obtain, the better the result- it definitely pays (if you can get it) to use the yellow pasta made with egg (pasta al uovo).

For two or three people, boil about half a pound of conchiglie (or whatever) in plenty of salted water until they are cooked. (Say 12 minutes for dried packet pasta.) They should be soft but not slimy (al dente). When the pasta is cooked, drain, serve into bowls and mix a large teaspoonful of the pesto into each. Serve quickly while still hot, and offer parmesan grated over the top.

Conchiglie & Tomato Sauce

Make a Salsa di Pomodori, a straightforward tomato sauce. Peel and finely chop several cloves of garlic and a large onion. Soften the onion and garlic in a pan in some good olive oil. If you have it, finely chop a blade of celery and add it to the pan. Finely grate a fresh carrot and add that as well. Chop a can of tomatoes and add them to the pan, then add some pasata as well. Add half a glass of white wine, season with salt and pepper, add a good pinch of oregano, adjust the liquid to a suitable consistency, cover and simmer for at least half an hour, and then puree in a liquidiser.

Meanwhile, for two or three people, boil about half a pound of conchiglie for about 12 minutes in plenty of salted water until they are cooked soft but not slimy (al dente), then drain. Toss the pasta in a spoonful of good olive oil, and grate a good sprinkling of black pepper into the pasta. Serve hot in bowls, pour the salsa di pomodori over, and grate parmesan cheese on top.

Lasagne

Lasagne are flat sheets of pasta, like unrolled cannelloni, and cooked from dry in a very similar way. Again, you need a shallow oven dish for this, as well as an oven and a saucepan to make the sauce and stuffing in.

First of all make an Italian meat sauce. Start by colouring about a pound of minced beef in a little olive oil in a pan. Meanwhile peel and chop several cloves of garlic and an onion and add them to the mixture. Add a can of tinned tomatoes, roughly chopped and some pasata or tomato puree as well- one of the secrets of the way Italian food tastes is that they use a lot of tomato. Another secret is that they often put a good pinch of sugar in with the tomato as well. Season the meat sauce with salt and pepper and add some oregano. Add half a glass of white wine and adjust the liquid content with water. Cook the meat sauce for about 45 minutes.

Now make the cheese sauce. Start with a standard besciamella sauce of a couple of ounces of butter melted in a pan, a dessertspoonful or so of plain flour mixed in and then about half a pint of milk added slowly over a gentle heat with lots of stirring to ensure no lumps remain. When you have the basic thickened white sauce, season it with some salt an pepper and put in a bayleaf to infuse it. Now remove it from the heat and add several ounces of grated cheese, a big mound of a cooking cheese like Cheddar. Stir it in furiously so it melts in the sauce and mixes with it.

It is a good idea to soak the sheets of pasta in hot water beforehand to reduce their tendency to crack when they get wet, but watch out for them sticking together- once they do so the suction of them absorbing water means they are virtually impossible to prise apart. Grease the base of the shallow baking dish with a little butter and put in a splash of the meat sauce. Cover the bottom of the dish with a layer of the lasagne sheets and cover them with another layer of meat sauce and so on until you have three or four layers of pasta. Pour the cheese sauce over the top so that everything is covered, grate some parmesan over it and bake the dish in a medium- low oven for about an hour.

Macaroni Cheese

Everyone brought up in the middle part of this century knows macaroni are short lengths of a thick tubular pasta, because in those days macaroni was the only type of Italian pasta ordinarily available in this country. For some reason, the Victorians took to macaroni in a way they failed to do for any other pasta, and did so for one dish only- Macaroni Cheese- which they seem to have regarded as simple fare, suitable for invalids and children.

Make the cheese sauce. Start with a standard besciamella sauce of a couple of ounces of butter melted in a pan, a dessertspoonful or so of plain flour mixed in and then about half a pint of milk added slowly over a gentle heat with lots of stirring to ensure no lumps remain. When you have the basic thickened white sauce, season it with some salt an pepper and put in a bayleaf to infuse it. Now remove it from the heat and add several ounces of grated cheese, a big mound of a cooking cheese like Cheddar. Stir it in furiously so it melts in the sauce and mixes with it.

Meanwhile, boil about half a pound of macaroni in plenty of water for about 12 minutes. Greas an oven dish, drain the macaroni and spread evenly over the dish. Pour the cheese sauce over the macaroni, dot the top with slices of tomato and put in a medium oven for 20 minutes to half an hour to crisp the top slightly. Serve.

Minestrone

Minestrone is a lovely thick soup, a sort of vegetable stew. You need a ham bone or a few ounces of bacon pieces, about 2 ounces of haricot beans, a clove of garlic, an onion, a blade of celery, a carrot, a tin of tomatoes, half a small white cabbage, other diced vegetables such as a courgette and a little handful of vermicelli or small broken pasta.

Soak the haricot beans in cold water for at least two hours until they swell up, then boil for an hour until well-cooked. Fry the bacon pieces in good olive oil, then add the chopped garlic and the chopped onion. Dice the carrot and the celery, and fry them as well. Shred the cabbage, dice the courgette and add them. Add half a tin of tomatoes chopped and half a glass of white wine. Season with salt and pepper and add some Italian herbs- bay, oregano and a pinch of basil. Adjust the liquid content with water or stock. Add a handful of broken pasta, cover and simmer gently for about three quarters of an hour until the vegetables are well cooked. Serve hot in bowls as a soup with a good sprinkling of parmesan cheese grated over.

Pizza Margherita

Ah! Pizza- the Italians' contribution to civilisation. Forget strange insipid things from America "with extra toppings", this is the real thing, the genuine article. Just in case you were in any doubt about the matter, Scrote feels obliged to point out that there are no such things as 'Hawaiian' or 'Mexican' pizzas, no matter what they have on top of them- such things simply do not exist and never have done. If you should suffer the misfortune to encounter one, Old Scrote strongly advises you to leave the area immediately because it has clearly become infested by culinary vermin. Scrote takes the view that such outrages should be firmly discouraged, otherwise someone'll be sprinkling oats on top next and claiming they serve Scottish Pizzas next.

Pizzas are wonderful food for parties and friends- they are not really that difficult to make and most of the preparation can be done well in advance. You can involve your guests in assembling their own pizza in the last stages, then you get 20 minutes to glug wine and eat a starter while they cook. The oven warms the room, they smell absolutely heavenly when they are cooking (in fact with practice you can tell pretty closely when they are cooked from the smell alone), they are visually stunning and just about everyone likes them- what more could you ask for? You can even eat them with your fingers at a pinch.

The base of a Pizza is made from a simple bread dough, exactly like ordinary bread- in fact you can use any leftovers for bread rolls. Unlike ordinary bread, a pizza is not so sensitive to the rising and you can keep surplus dough in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze it for up to 3 months, and it will still make acceptable (although crunchy) pizzas if you roll it thinly.

You need to make the dough, about two hours or more before you plan to cook the pizzas. For two good-sized pizzas, take 12 oz strong flour, add 1/2 sachet dried yeast, 1 teaspoon salt, and about 1/2 pint warm water. The exact amount and type of yeast depends on what you can get locally. Scrote use a dried yeast that can be mixed into the flour dry, but real yeast and some dried yeasts need to be 'started' first and quantities recommended vary, so follow the directions on the packet using the amount indicated for this weight of flour. Mix the yeast (or the yeast mixture) into the dry flour dry, then gradually add the warm water until most of the flour is incorporated. Don't add too much water- it is much easier to add more water to a dough that is too stiff, than to recover a dough that is too sloppy. Knead to an elastic dough. Put the dough in a bowl, cover it with a cloth & set it to rise in a warm place for at least an hour. The dough should approximately double in size. Bring out the dough and knock it back to its original size. Knead it again, then divide the dough in 2 or 3, and roll out very thin, into 12" or 10" rounds on a well-floured board. Lay them onto shallow baking trays, which you have greased beforehand. If you don't have a baking tray a big flat dinner plate will do fine, particularly if it has a rim at the edge. Some people recommend that you brush the pizza base with olive oil, but Scrote never bothers.

For the topping, take a can tomatoes and chop them, then spread the mash thinly over the the base of the pizza, nearly up to the edge. Sprinkle oregano over the tomato generously and season with salt and pepper. Then put cheese on top. You can use an ordinary cooking cheese, grated- cheap cheddar is very good for this, but the proper cheese to use is Mozzarella, a raw, fibrous, soft white Italian cheese made from buffalo milk, which is particularly stringy when it melts, but not particularly cheap. You now have the basic pizza, Pizza Margherita ready for cooking.

Real Pizzeria use a long baker's paddle to put their pizza directly on the floor in a wood-fired brick oven without a dish. (Ruth says, "For some strange reason, halls of residence have left the wood ovens out of the kitchens -damned inconsiderate"). These ovens are very hot, about 750°, far hotter than any domestic oven can reach, and have enormous thermal inertia so they maintain their searing temperature when a pizza is put in. You need to bear this in mind when cooking your pizza- turn your oven up as high as it will go well before you want to use it and let it get as hot as possible. Put your pizza on the top shelf and don't try to do more than two at a time. Bake the pizza in the hottest oven for 20 minutes.

Pizza Montenara

Pizza Montenara is a basic pizza (tomato, oregano and mozzarella), with pieces of Italian sausage, salami and bits of ham on top as well. Other things you can add include slices of mushroom (soaking them in a little olive oil first improves them) and diced green or red sweet peppers.

Pizza Napoletana

This is the classic pizza from Naples- a basic pizza of tomato, oregano and mozzarella, with strips of anchovy and black olives on top as well, and sometimes capers. Watch out for the stones in the olives when you eat the pizza or you'll break a tooth. Anchovy fillets can be bought in little flat tins in oil, but they are quite expensive like this. Italian delicatessens sometimes sell whole anchovies loose- small fish looking all bent and squashed as though they have been run over by a truck, which comes from them being packed in large tins with coarse salt. These are much cheaper but you need to cut off the heads and tails. Don't worry too much about the bones- anchovies are small fish with fine bones and the cooking makes the bones so brittle that you won't notice them. Anchovies are very salty, and some people don't like them at all, so ask before adding them if you are cooking for friends.

Prosciutto con Melone

This is luxury stuff- a starter made of gossamer thin slices of raw Parma ham wrapped round bits of melon, and utterly delicious. Prosciutto is best bought sliced directly from the air-dried ham, but once cut the slices dry out very quickly no matter what you have wrapped them in, so don't keep them very long once bought.

Eleanor advises, "Don't prepare too early or the process of osmosis, with which we are all doubtless conpletely familiar inasmuch as it relates to concentration gradients, which are not to be confused with the action of the mitochondria (not to be confused with of hypochondria) in active transport, will make the melon all soggy. I trust that is perfectly clear?"

Risotto

Like Pizza, Risotto is really a whole family of dishes with the same basic method and lots of different ways of flavouring them. It is the Italian version of the Turkish Pilaff and Arab Pilau. The basic idea is to cook raw rice in a savoury sauce, so that the rice absorbs virtually all the water from the sauce. It is quick and easy, looks good, is healthy being low in saturated fats and high in carbohydrates, tastes excellent and can be made very cheaply, so this was another staple of Scrote's student days.

A typical risotto for two or three people might start with a small onion and a couple of cloves of garlic finely chopped and fried in some olive oil. Add some closed mushrooms cut in quarters. Add some bits of cooked chicken diced, or some bits of ham or Italian sausage (if you are not vegetarian). Add some diced sweet green pepper for colour, and then add about half a tin or more of tinned tomatoes, roughly chopped. Add a bit more liquid, chicken stock (if you had the foresight to make a stock from the raw carcass of the chicken you got your leftovers of cooked chicken from), or a dash of wine if you are feeling rich, and a little water. You should have a fairly sloppy looking stew at this point. Season with salt and pepper and add a dash of Italian herbs- oregano or basil. Now add two coffee cups of rice. There is a particular round-grain rice that Italians use for risotto but in fact a good quality long-grain rice will do just as well. Cover and simmer very gently for about twent minutes until the rice is properly cooked, stirring frequently and adding more water if the risotto becomes too dry- it should be stodgy but moist and the rice should not have any hard bits in it. To serve, plop a big dollop on a plate and grate some parmesan over it, or ordinary cheese if you are feeling poor.

Spaghetti alla Bolognese

Ruth's recipe: "Ideally begin this at 11.00am for supper at 7.00pm. Fry onions, garlic, salt and pepper until onions are transluscent. Set aside on low heat. Fry meat until crumbly. Mix with onions and heat. Add concentrated tomatoes, grated carrots and celery. Then add herbs (Bay, nutmeg, basil, oregano) wine, vinegar, pesto, gravy granules, tomato paste, mustard etc at regular intervals throughout the day. Simmer constantly on low heat."

Scrote's recipe for a bolognese meat sauce is simpler and Scrote feels that it is a bit more authentic. The Italians insist that there is no such dish as Spaghetti Bolognese- the ragu bolognese is a sauce from Bologna used for any pasta, but usually served with tagliatelle verdi. Strictly speaking, the meat for a ragu bolognese sauce should be two thirds finely ground beef and a third minced chicken livers, but chicken livers are difficult to obtain, disgustingly messy and the result is rather rich, so generally Scrote leave them out, which means that the sauce is just an ordinary meat sauce, sugo di carne or salsa di carne. However, as in all things, cookery writers disagree even over the most basic facts- two of Scrote's recipe books insist that that ragu bolognese should include chicken liver, but the chef Carluccio insists that ragu bolognese is made with half pork, half beef and presumably he should know.

Sugo di carne

Salsa di carne

Start by colouring about a pound of minced beef in a little olive oil in a pan. Meanwhile peel and chop several cloves of garlic and an onion and add them to the mixture. Chop a blade of celery very finely and add that to th emixture in the pan. Add a can of tinned tomatoes, roughly chopped and some pasata or tomato puree as well- one of the secrets of the way Italian food tastes is that they use a lot of tomato. Another secret is that they often put a good pinch of sugar in with the tomato as well. Season the meat sauce with salt and pepper and add some oregano, basil and a grating of nutmeg. Cook the sauce for about 45 minutes. If you have a liquidiser, then giving the sauce a whirl in it makes it smoother and better for coating the pasta. You can add a bit of cream at the end, to bring out the orange colour of the tomato.

Now put a large pan with several pints of cold water and bring it to the boil. Drop in a good sized handful of spaghetti (about half a 500g packet is enough for three) and swirl it around as it softens. Keep the water at a rolling boil for about 12 minutes, stirring to stop the pasta sticking to the bottom or sides, and then check a bit to make sure it is cooked- still firm but cooked through (al dente or bite-able as the Italians say). Drain the pasta and swirl it around with a tablespoon of really good olive oil. Grind a heavy sprinkling of black pepper over it, then serve it into bowls, put a good dollop of the meat sauce over it and grate real parmesan cheese generously over the top. Serve at once while it is still hot. This treatment of meat sauce over pasta works well for all types of small pasta- below there are some other sauces that can also be applied to most sorts of small pasta.

Tagliatelle Verdi with smoked salmon

This is rich and luxurious party stuff, but not really everyday fare for the impoverished Scrote. If you can find a place that slices its own smoked salmon, you will also find that they sell packets of pieces at around half the price of the proper sliced stuff, and these do just as well for this dish. For some reason those wealthy enough to afford smoked salmon prefer their slices rectangular in shape, and since salmon are disappointingly non-rectangular fish, there are always lots of pieces left over which the upper crust are less keen to buy.

For three people you need about half a packet of Tagliatelle Verdi (250g), 10 oz single cream, and 4 - 6 oz smoked salmon pieces. Cook the tagliatelle in plenty of boiling water until tender (3-5 mins if fresh, 12 - 15 mins if dried) and drain. Chop the smoked salmon in small pieces and add smoked salmon and cream to the pasta. Return to a gentle heat, stir and warm the dish through and serve immediately. Do not heat it too fiercely as cream doesn't like being boiled and the smoked salmon cooks in seconds, turning pink in the process.

This pasta in a simple cream sauce is also very good with other delicately flavoured seafood such as prawns or scallops. Green tagliatelle is used simply for the colour contrast- the colouring in the pasta is spinach and has very little effect on the overall taste, but it looks much better against the white of the cream. Sprinkle over lemon juice or parmesan if liked.

Tagliatelle with Mushroom Cream & Bacon Sauce

This is another cream sauce for pasta. Again, chopped bacon pieces do just as well for this dish as proper slices of bacon and are much cheaper. You must use fresh closed mushrooms though- open mushrooms will stain the sauce brown with their spores. Again you need about 250g of tagliatelle al uovo, or other pasta, which you should cook in plentiful boiling water for about 12 minutes if dried or 3 - 5 minutes if fresh. At the same time gently cook the bacon pieces in some olive oil in another pan, and then add the mushrooms, sliced, in the last few minutes.

Drain the pasta, add the cream, add the bacon and mushrooms, return to the heat and quickly warm through but do not boil it- cream doesn't like being boiled. Serve and eat immediately.