Looking at it now it looks a wee bit overdone, burnt one could say even, but at the time I didn't notice, it just had a nice charred taste.
I saw chicory in the supermarket recently and thought it was about time I gave it try again. I can't remember eating it since I was a child and those memories aren't ones of liking it. Tastes change though so in the basket it went. I had thoughts of cooking it on the ridged grill pan and the internet suggested this combination.
Although I ate pretty well at Glastonbury by the time I got home I was really fancying some greens. So on Monday I popped to Sainos and grabbed peas and broad beans in their pods along with some little gem lettuces and spring onions. I'd seen HFW do a griddled salad of similar ingredients and thought I'd do something similar, adding a little feta and mint then serving it alongside some lamb chops. I went ahead as planned but for some reason it didn't do it for me massively. I loved the griddled lettuce and spring onions and the fresh peas and broad beans were great but I don't think I liked the feta and mint so much. I should have stuck with HFW's ingredients.
Come Tuesday this meant I had some peas, feta and mint left and the first thing that sprang to mind was a frittata. I'd never made one before but I had an inkling that I'd heard of such a combination and Google proved me correct with this recipe.
First off a belated Happy Christmas and New Year. With all the time off work you'd think one would have a lot of time to blog but it just doesn't work that way, we're here now though.
I've been known to frequent the occasional food chat forum and over time you notice that the same threads pop up again and again. One such thread, well type of thread anyway, is the discussion of the correct way to cook something. When a thread such as this pops up you tend to get two distinct camps (no middle of the road here), the traditional is the right and only way crowd and the folk should be free to stick what they want in it and still call it carbonara crowd. I'm generally in the first camp, carbonara has no cream in it, if you want to make an egg, cream, pancetta and parmesan sauce so be it but don't call it carbonara. As well as being a carbonara purist I'm also no fan of hypocrisy and think if you have a belief then you go the whole hog with it and don't exhibit contradictory behaviour somewhere along the line.
Herein lies the problem. Tonight my better half is off with her female friends and so my Saturday night is free but I don't want to get drunk or spend money. As such I'm stuck at home and have decided to cook. A friend mentioned seafood with rice earlier on and so I was going to go with that but then the thought of some seafood on a pizza popped into my mind and no pilaf, paella or risotto was ever going to budge it. Off I went to Sainsbury and started to fill the trolley: I got some king prawns and some squid; some tomatoes and some basil; and then, even though I know that the proper way to eat your seafood pizza allows no cheese, I headed to the cheese aisle and grabbed a ball of mozzarella.
I know it goes against everything I've ever thought or said about carbonara and hypocrisy but I just needed the stringiness and chew from the melted cheese and a base of nothing but bread and tomato just wasn't going to suffice. Maybe I should calm down on the cream in their carbonara brigade from now on.
Anyway, on to the recipe, this isn't from a book and I just made it up as I went along tonight, it looked good and, more importantly, tasted great though. Result.
