It was late summer & we were hungry. Armed with only a jar of Dolmio, a block of cheddar cheese & a packet of Diamond penne pasta, my friend Brian Read & I were holed up in his East Fremantle kitchen after school one day & decided surely we could do better. even tho this was back in the mid 80’s, in some respects last week’s
fridaynightdinnerbox was born that day.
Me & my mate Ready ate a lot of pasta that year, & the notion of tomato sauces that grew from that afternoon’s cooking storm in the months that followed probably included, at some point, pretty much every herb, spice, leaf & vegetable any normal pantry would likely keep. I remember them all as delicious.
Some twenty-five years on, pasta & tomatoes, with its infinite variations, is still the dish I turn to when nothing else is quite enough. What began back then has continued & it is worth mentioning that, although the tomato sauce produced on my stove these days has certainly improved, I am still making small discoveries & experiencing little breakthroughs with each new sauce.
Not all things change; what has stayed the same is the simple joy I feel each time I gather the ingredients I need on to my chopping board in preparation for making the latest batch of tomato sauce.
(part1)
ingredients: tomato sauce
onions, salt, olive oil
fresh tomatoes, garlic, an orange, green peppercorns, olive oil
red/yellow capsicum, olive oil
method
*cut onions in half, salt & place face down & roast in a liberally oiled pan;
*core/deseed tomatoes, peel garlic, cut orange in half & squeeze, roast all together with peppercorns & olive oil. expect a lot of liquid, which should reduce some, as the tomatoes caramelise;
*oil capsicums, roast till blackening in a hot oven, rest covered before peeling & deseeding.
*in a pan with butter & tomato puree, add all roasted ingredients together. wine can be added here, or chicken stock, then reduce to get the right consistency, at which point I like to puree with a stick blender.
The sauce can be made in bulk & kept in the fridge for quite few days, to be used in any number of dishes; for this dish just pour into a pan & warm through, adding par-cooked agnolottis, to simmer for a mo, then serve.
(part2)
Agnolotti is one of a number of types folded pasta, like ravioli or tortellini, which envelopes a filling, & is baked with a sauce or poached then added to a sauce. technique, shape & size vary, & those inside last week’s fridaynightdinnerboxes were nice big fat ones, crescent shaped with crimped edges, rolled & cut by hand, almost like an empanada, which I poached & finished with a good olive oil to prevent them sticking in transit. to make the mix go a little further at home, however, using a pasta machine I made a thinner dough & smaller pouches of filling which were shaped using a cutter & frozen & stored in a zip-lock bag for emergencies…like breakfast this morning :)
Follow this link for instructions on making your own pasta, it’s as good as any to get you started:
(part3)
Warning: most butchers don’t carry beef cheeks, & they are available usually by order only at a minimum of 5kg each time. To fill orders this week I had to source beef cheeks from both my butcher in the Mt Eden shops & the Westmere Butchery. Before you get started on this recipe then, ring around.
To prepare this filling, allow a day at least to cook & prep the beef cheeks. the process is quite straight forward, but takes time.
beef cheeks, white peppercorns
onions, garlic, salt flakes, butter, olive oil
*in a deep pan, cover the cheeks with water, add a few white peppercorns, cover with foil & cook in the oven at 130 for roughly 5-6 hours. remove, cool, hold in fridge, still in the cooking broth, overnight to set;
*sweat diced onions & garlic, salted, in butter & olive oil;
*clean & dice cheek meat; add to a mixing bowl with onions & garlic, chopped parsley. correct seasoning to taste.
I really like the honesty here. taking yet another page from chef Kent Baddeley’s cooking philosophy here, it seems an almost bizarrely revolutionary understatement to conventional cookery’s unquestioned insistence upon the usual mire-poix & bouquet garni additions in water alone, there nothing to confuse the unique taste of the cheek meat, letting flavour speak for itself.
As mentioned, with any left-over filling it is quite acceptable to make additional agnolottis which can be frozen down for emergencies (or eaten for breakfast). But also as a mix this simple & tasty combination works equally as well elsewhere: in a pastry case/vol-au-vent/tart/pie! in a tortilla/taco/burrito! hell, stick it between two slices of bread & call it a sandwich YUM! Nothing wrong with redefining BLT in the name of using up the left-overs…
