Mushroom Pasta

I like mushrooms and I like pasta. I particularly like them together. I didn't always, but I think mushrooms are one of those acquired tastes. And I suspect I would've liked pasta a lot sooner if it hadn't always involved a tomato-based sauce, which I don't particularly like.

This recipe is actually to create an asparagus sauce, but I use it for mushrooms, or whatever else I feel like making. Even better, this is one of those sauces that is quick, so you can make it while your pasta is boiling.

First, chop up your vegetables. I always make my mushroom pieces nice and big because they shrink once they've cooked a bit. Then, boil a cup of milk. Keep an eye on it, because it's really annoying when it boils over. Once the milk is boiling, add in your vegetables and some stock powder or a crumbled up stock cube. Simmer that for a while, around ten minutes or so, stirring now and then. While that's busy, mix together 1T oil and 2t flour into a paste. Once you've finished simmering the sauce, add the paste, bring to the boil (again) and allow it to thicken, while stirring. Once it's at a consistency you like, serve with pasta.

Courgette Cookies

This is a recipe from the Riverford Farm Cook Book, one of my favourites. It's kind of like a carrot cake, only with courgettes. If you're from the States or otherwise weird, you would call these zucchini. We also call them baby marrows - being an archaeologist and having excavated cemeteries, baby marrow means something else entirely, so I'm going to stick with courgettes. And when I say cookies, I mean cupcakes, not biscuits (again, clarification for the Americans).

Ingredients:

• 120g softened butter (they recommend unsalted, I don't bother)
• 1/2c oil (they recommend sunflower, I use whatever I have)
• 1/2c sugar (they recommend castor sugar, which I use if I have, otherwise I just use ordinary white/golden brown sugar)
• 1c soft brown sugar (also called treacle sugar)
• 3 eggs
• 2 3/4c cake flour
• 2t baking powder
• 4T cocoa
• 450g courgettes
• 1t vanilla extract (I usually just pour in some vanilla essence, today I'm actually using extract because I bought some for something else entirely)

First, peel and grate the courgettes. Or find someone to do that for you - there are few things I hate more than grating, so that's what I do. Then put those aside. Next, sift your dry ingredients into a bowl and put that aside as well. Cream together your butter, oil and sugar. Gradually add in the eggs and milk. Fold in the dry ingredients, then the courgettes and vanilla. Don't forget, food always tastes better if it's been tasted along the way, so taste, taste, taste!

Once you're satisfied, spoon the mixture into cookie cups and cook at about 190C for about 15 minutes, until the skewer comes out clean.

Once they've cooled down, it's time for icing (or frosting, in the States). I like vanilla icing with courgette cookies. Take some butter, some milk, some vanilla essence and some icing sugar. Mix them together until you have the right consistency and ice away.

Quiche

I like quiche. Not only is it a great word (the online OED tells me it originated from a French word in the 1920s), it tastes really good. There is a problem with quiche, however. It's expensive. The solution, therefore, is to make my own. It turns out that making quiche is really easy. For some reason none of my cookbooks have quiche recipes in them, which I feel is a failing on their part, and I had to wait for Fresh Living magazine to come along and tell me how to do it.

So, you cook your filling - today I'm roasting butternut and mushrooms. If you wouldn't eat something raw, cook it first. Next up, you take some puff pastry and line a tart tin. You put baking beans in on top and bake that for 10 minutes.

Once that's done, you remove the beans and let them cool off somewhere (some of them will stick to the pastry, it's annoying but not life-threatening), stick your cooked filling in, add anything else you want, today that's spinach and leeks. Then you scramble a couple of eggs with some milk and salt and pepper and pour that over, so that it fills the tart up. That, you bake a bit longer, probably around half an hour, until it's firm and then you eat it.

Simple, quick and oh so yummy!