Dinner tonight will be Spaghetti Bolognese, something I haven't cooked in a remarkably long time. The ingredients are:

500g ground beef
250g dry-cure streaky bacon cut up into 2cm long pieces
300ml passata
250ml fresh beef stock
200ml Chianti or similar red wine
A large carrot, grated
A large onion, finely chopped
Two sticks celery, chopped into thin slices
2 bay leaves

Fry the beef, then transfer to a large pot. Do the same with the bacon. Fry the chopped onion in a little oil until it just softens then transfer it to the large pot. Same goes for the carrot and celery (do these at the same time). Add the bay leaves, stock, Chianti and passata to the large pot then bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and cook on a low temperature for 1.5-2 hours. By the time it is ready it should be a lot more reduced than when you first started. Check the seasoning then serve with the very best fresh spaghetti.

We have a couple of friends from Oxford days coming around for dinner tonight; there will be some hilariously fine wine consumed. Our starter will be salad with confit of goose gésiers dressed with my favourite dressing. Gésiers are the gizzard muscles of ducks and geese, they are delicious little bundles of meaty goodness. 'Confit' means they have been preserved in the bird's own fat. We will then have Tolosan bean stew with bacon served with Sillfield Farm black pudding. The stew is cooking as I type and the entire flat is filled with a wonderful aroma of beans and garlic. We will finish off with some British cheeses from Neal's Yard Dairy: Cheshire, Lancashire and Caerphilly.

Once again, Sillfield Farm have provided quality pork products that fill one with pleasure when eating them. Namely, last night's dinner of Sicilian sausages:

You can tell they are meaty because they go pink when cooked. Sicilian is one of my favourite flavours; they are flavoured with chilli, Parmesan and Chardonnay wine. However, if you should ever find yourself buying Sillfield Farm sausages and they have gluten-free Cumberland rings available then these are the ones to go for.

This news story on the BBC is reasonably interesting. Apparently research has shown that chillies have been cultivated, exported and used in cooking for over six thousand years. That is pretty much the dawn of agriculture, so nice to know that even ancient man enjoyed fiery food and would go to great lengths to make it.

This is a slight variation on the traditional recipe, but my minor changes are only designed to add flavour. I have to say I am not sure where one can generally obtain the black beans of Tolosa, we got ours from the restaurant that serves the best bean stew in that town. For this you will need:

500g Tolosan black beans, alubia negra
600g unsmoked streaky bacon in one piece
500ml fresh beef stock
Some minor white wine, Anjou Blanc is good
A large onion
6 cloves of garlic
100ml olive oil

Soak the beans in water overnight. About five hours before you want to eat chop up the onion and fry it in a few millilitres of oil until it begins to soften. Place the fried onion in a large pan. Crush or chop up the garlic and fry until it just begins to change colour, this will not take long. Put the fried garlic in the pan. Drain the beans then add to the pan (discarding the water they were soaked in), along with the beef stock and the rest of the olive oil. Add some of the white wine until the beans are just covered. You then bring the stew to the boil, then reduce the temperature until it is only just simmering. This is very important, the temperature should be such that the surface of the stew just quivers. Stew with a lid on the pan for two hours at this temperature.

When this time has elapsed cut the piece of bacon into 2cm cubes and fry until the bacon fat just begins to run. You then add this to the stew and simmer for another three hours, again with the pan covered. The beans need to be cooked for five hours in total. It'll then be ready to eat.

Ideally, you should serve this with black pudding/blood sausage and pickled peppers. The pickled peppers are not terribly wine-friendly so skip them if you are going to drink something good, I know I am not serving any when I cook this at the weekend.

For the type version of this stew go to Restaurant Fronton in Tolosa, it is freaking delicious there.

David

Last weekend we took some people to La Porchetta. This time we went to the Islington branch. The food was, once again, high quality and I can highly recommend the Messicana pizza; the fresh sausage on it is delicious.

I should point out an omission from my review, whilst people can smoke away happily in La Porchetta there are also no smoking sections in all of the branches.

David

We have a vegetarian coming around for dinner tonight. I am happy to say I have never had to cook for a vegetarian before, so when this challenge was announced to me I felt rather apprehensive. Quite obviously, most recipes would simply be ruined by 'removing the meat'. However, it did occur that one of our regular recipes could be easily adapted. Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad can easily become Hot and Sour Prawn salad with a change in the source of protein. If we get large and suitably meaty prawns on our immanent trip to Borough Market this should work a treat. I do suspect the original recipe may well be the best, though.

David