Italian Pork Chops with Gnocchi and Broccoli

Well the Mother-in-law has gone and we have the house back to ourselves, just the three of us.  We escorted her off the premises and took her to the train station so that she could say a teary goodbye to Z and R.  Having visitors is very much like going on holiday, the usual routines are knocked out and by the time you get home there is nothing to eat.  All that we had in the house was a head of broccoli so I was dispatched to the shops to stock up.

All weekend I had been hankering for a lump of pork, simply seasoned and grilled, so when I found pork loin steaks on offer at the supermarket I knew what we were having for tea.  Back home I rubbed the pork in garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and olive oil and put them into the fridge to marinate.  There was one further consideration for the evening meal, the 2012 Euro final between Spain and Italy.  Kick off was at 7:45pm, R has his bath at 7pm.  It would be touch and go if we could get the meal out in time for the start of the match.

I put the grill on as the bath was running, filled a pan with water and chopped the broccoli so that everything would be ready to cook the second R was in bed.  By the time the chops had been turned once under the grill the water for the gnocchi and broccoli had come up to the boil.  I was originally going to fry the gnocchi and steam the broccoli, but this would have been more time consuming and would have made more washing up so they both ended up in the same pan.  Once cooked I drained the gnocchi and broccoli and tossed the two in warm olive oil seasoned with anchovies and dried chilli flakes.

By the time I had served the meal the match was two minutes old.  I'd missed the anthems and the kick-off, but I managed to watch the rest of the match uninterrupted with one of the tastiest and quickest meals I have cooked in a long time.  Spain may have won the European Championship but Italy won meal of the weekend!

Pasta with Broccoli

After all of the beef we managed to consume over the course of the last week, its no surprise that we're having a couple of vegetarian days.  We often make pasta dishes with broccoli but tonight is a new one.  I happened to catch one of Jamie Oliver's Meals in 30 Minutes a few weeks ago and was intrigued with his take on the dish, so I decided to give it a try.

At it's heart, it is very similar to how I would have cooked the dish; anchovies, garlic and dried chilli fried in olive oil and then mixed through cooked pasta and broccoli.  The main difference is the use of the broccoli stalk.  This gets blended with the other sauce ingredients in a food processor to make a paste.  The paste is then fried off, adding a little of the pasta water every couple of minutes to stop it from catching.  The broccoli florets are cooked with the pasta and stirred through the cooked sauce.  The inclusion of the broccoli stalk adds a nice depth of flavour and saves on food waste.  I'll be cooking this again, thank you Mr Oliver.

Tagliatelle with Stilton and Broccoli Sauce

Last week was national Stilton week.  For some reason, even though I was well aware of this fact, I neglected to cook anything containing my favourite cheese*.  Z took it upon herself to rectify the situation with tonight's menu.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Z makes a mean cheese sauce.  More than half a block of Stilton went into a bechamel before cooked broccoli was added.  The whole lot was then tossed over pasta and devoured.  It's not the most authentic Italian dish in the world, but it was very tasty.

*correct at time of publishing, my favourite cheese can vary week to week.

Conchiglie with Broccoli

There aren't many food rules that I abide to and there are a few that I take great pleasure in breaking.  My favourite "rule break" is putting the wrong sauce with the wrong pasta shape.  The idea of having multiple packets of pasta on the go at the same time just in case I fancied a creamy sauce rather than a tomato sauce one night is baffling.  I am, however, willing to try new recipes when they present themselves.

In the interest of not cutting my nose off to spite my face, I try to buy a different pasta shape whenever I run out.  This time I have ended up with Conchiglie, or shells depending on how poncey you choose to be.  I received The Geometry of Pasta book last Christmas, which is an encyclopaedia of which sauce to cook for which pasta.  I duly turned to it to see what it recommended.

I was expecting a snail ragu, or a chunky sauce that would catch in the pasta, so imagine my surprise when the book suggested a simple sauce of romanesco broccoli.  We didn't have a romanesco but we did have a standard broccoli so we substituted that instead.  You can find the full recipe here.