Mushroom and spinach pasta

 As this week I am inviting students from  St Johns' college to join our zoom meeting, I wanted to try a quick and easy pasta dish with home made pasta without a machine. ( as not everyone has one)

We made this mushroom and spinach dish, it turned out well and had a big group join in.

Dear Karina

Hi, thanks for the session today.

I made a pasta for four people together and ate it as a lunch.

It was so delicious and everyone liked the fresh pasta more than the dried one!

Thank you very much.

Best wishes 

Hiroe

Courgettes and pasta

After making ravioli today, I had some pasta dough left over so I turned it into tagliatelle.
Dried it and bagged it up for another day when I would need a quick meal.

Coming back from the allotment with a handful of courgettes, I wondered what to do with them.
Then the doorbell rang and my youngest son, paid us a surprise visit.

So out came the tagliatelle and found Nigella's recipe which was quick and extremely tasty.
Definitively one to do again, especially in courgette season.

Broccoli, Mushroom Pasta

A one pot meal that worked out very well.

The glut of purple sprouting broccoli was turned into a ginger and broccoli (and coconut milk) soup,
I then found this Broccoli and Mushroom Pasta which was delicious and quick.
Well worth doing again.

Leek Soup, Pear Custard Pie and Pasta

It was a little bit of a shock to see that the leeks in the allotment were about to go into flower so steps were taken to turn these beauties into a lovely Vegan Leek and Potato Soup which we had with a yoghurt and oat bread.

Noor making the Leek & potato soup

Isadora making the bread under dad's supervision

As the group wanted to make home made pasta we had a taster of pasta with a simple tomato sauce, topped with cracked pepper and parmesan cheese.

This is how it is done.

Look what I picked!

Picking conference pears for our desert

June and Noor preparing the pears for the pie

Pear Custard Pie

What a lovely morning we had.

Seiko is arriving for a holiday in Cambridge.

A few months ago Seilo emailed to see if she could join From Spade to Plate when she arrives in the UK for a week of holiday. On arrival in Heathrow (6am) she took a coach to arrive in time at our home to join in the cooking.

     
Within minutes she was turning the handle of the pasta machine and was making fresh pasta. As we had so many tomatoes we turn them into a fresh tomato sauce which turned out wonderfully.

                    
              



We sat around the kitchen table and peeled all the plum tomatoes we picked from the allotment and then
 canned them whole, as per the 'recipe' from my friend Serenella in Italy. This involved peeling the tomatoes, stuffing them into jars and finishing them off in a waterbath for 20 minutes

As a desert we poached some of the pears we picked from a tree on Chesterton Road, using elderflower syrup and some whipped cream.
 


We had a cucumer and tomato salad to go with it.

From Spade to Plate: a Flowery affair

Pasta with purple sprouting broccoli 
The pasta we made from scratch:
2 cups of plain flour,
 2 egg yolks,
some salt and a table spoon of oil. water to mix.

We made some Vegan Parmesan to go the past.

In the allotment we picked the purple sprouting broccoli, probably the last of it before it gets stringy.

From Spade to Plate 

We used  some aqua faba (chickpea water) to make some lemon cheese mousse

The food was lovely, but the two comments today were truly touching: "Coming here is better than therapy" and " Coming to these sessions is giving me passion for life"

Raw beetroot and Feta salad with purple sprouting pasta

Today we planted new potatoes in the area where there were still some beetroot  left over from last year.  We harvested the beetroot and turned them into a beetroot and feta salad which we ate as a side dish.

Our main dish was freshly made tagliatelli with steamed  purple sprouting broccoli and parmesan cheese.