Farfalle with Broad Beans, Bacon, Red Onion & Thyme

Not strictly a Sunday roast this, but it's one of my own inventions that's good enough for sharing I think. I tend to be an inventive cook ... but as with all inventions, not everything is worth sharing, believe me! I wanted to go for a bit of a photo recipe this time around, as I'm aware I can be a bit lax with measurements - hopefully the photos make up for it.

I first knocked this together a few years back when we started to grow our own broad beans. It was one of those classic "what can I cook with these leftovers" dishes, when all I had was a ton of fresh broad beans, a few bits and pieces in the fridge, and plenty of summer sunshine. It's simplicity itself to make - the secret of all good Italian food, but relies on excellent quality ingredients in the correct proportions - that's the other secret to Italian cooking, and the one that most people tend to overlook.

Fresh broad beans, ready for cooking

Now in truth I'm not brilliant at measuring ingredients - unless I'm baking I tend to play it very much by eye/nose/whatever. I can't give exact proportions here, but hopefully the pictures will give you a clear idea of just how much of everything you'll need if you wanted to try and replicate this dish.

Ingredients

• Farfalle pasta (the little bows)
• Broad beans (cooked and shelled unless very fresh)
• Streaky bacon (I prefer mine unsmoked, but that's a matter of personal preference)
• Red onion, thiny sliced
• Fresh thyme
• Lemon zest
• A little white wine (optional really)
• Creme fraiche

Some of the ingredients

Preparation

First off prepare the thyme and lemon. I love thyme - well, I love all herbs to be honest! - so am very generous, but add as much as you think you'd like to eat. The lemon zest should be done lengthways to give a little texture as well as flavour, and the thyme simply needs to be pulled off the woody stems.

Lemon Zest and Thyme

Now the broad beans. Cook the de-podded beans by boiling in salted water for about 8-10 minutes or so, depending how large they are, and then leaving them to cool slightly. You're trying to get a very slight al dente type bean, doesn't matter if some are firm as they will be reheated again. Slip off the outer skin once cool, which should come off nice and easily, and put the lustrous green bean halves to one side.

Cooking broad beans - two different varieties here, hence the different colours

The cooked beans. These have been added to the Thyme/Lemon mix as this will all be added back in to the pan at the same time

Next get some onion cooking. You're looking for quite a sweet finish, so the onions are going to need to cook in a mixture of olive oil and butter for at least 15 minutes in order to sweeten. Whilst they're cooking put a large pan of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Onions cooking, these are about half way there

Now the bacon. Once the onions are cooked take them out of the pan, and add in the bacon chopped into strips. No need for extra oil or butter as the fat from the bacon itself will soon cook down and do the job for you. Crispier the better in my book, but cook to taste. When the bacon is about half way there, you'll need to get the pasta in the water. Different farfalle's will take different lengths of time, but for an average farfalle cooking time of 10 minutes now is the right time.

Farfalle pasta

Once the bacon is crispy, it's time for the rest of the ingredients to go back in. Add back in the onions and the broad bean, thyme and lemon mixture.

Bacon, onion, broad beans, thyme and lemon back in the pan

Once this comes back to temperature deglaze with a splash of white wine if you like, cook off some of the liquid, and then add in a good dollop or two of creme fraiche.

Adding in creme fraiche

You should end up with quite a loose sauce, ready to dress the pasta with.

All the sauce ingredients mixed together

Season well with salt & pepper, and add the pasta to the sauce (or should you add the sauce to the pasta? I'm never convinced by either camp if I'm honest) and you're done.

Pasta just added to the sauce, ready to mix

Top tip for pasta here - when you're draining it, always try and keep a little of the water from the pasta back in the pan. You can then use this liquid to loosen the sauce if you're accidentally let either the sauce or the cooked pasta get a little too dry.

Once you're ready either serve the past straight, or you can add a little more thyme and some parmesan for that finishing touch. I also like a couple of Bibanesi on the side, but that's not something you can easily get in the UK

The finished dish

A scrumptious light summer lunch, full of seasonal freshness and healthy to boot. What more could you want?

A Beefy Leftover Special: From Roast Topside to Vitello Tonnato

I'm a sucker for Farmer's markets, rarely get my food from anywhere else, and last Saturday it was Killerton House's turn (third Saturday in the month, in case you're local). This market has only been running for a year or so, and has attracted a couple of new meat producers recently. A while back I tried some lamb from Peradon Organic farm (http://www.peradonorganicfarm.co.uk/), which I made into Spit Roast Lamb and Wild Garlic Mash - unfortunately never got a chance to blog about that one. However last week I decided to plump for Beef instead from West Kidland farm (http://www.westkidland.co.uk/)- what what a piece of beef it was!

Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I also have a weakness for Rib of Beef on the bone, so it's not really like me to choose Topside, but it looked like a lovely piece of meat and a bargain at £15 for 2kg. It was very well hung too. I won't go into the way I cooked it this time, suffice to say that it was a pretty standard roast, that I served with a rather large yorkshire pudding, carrots, peas (in their pods) and new potatoes. Lovely stuff, which you can see on my Picasa food site if you're interested.

But what I really want to talk about is not the roast beef, it's what I did with the leftovers - Vitello Tonnato.

Vitello Tonnato aka Veal in Tuna Sauce

OK, first things first, obviously I wasn't using veal. But you don't really need to, to be honest. We've done this before with not only beef, but also lamb and even chicken. What is it? Basically it's cold meat dressed with a tuna sauce. It's simplicity itself to make, but like all simple food if the right ingredients are combined in the correct way then a few simple things can be transformed into something much greater than the sum of their parts. It should also be done with mayonnaise to be truly original, but as we're expecting our first child at the moment raw eggs are off the menu, so we are tending to use creme fraiche instead and that works out pretty well.

Ingredients (for four hungry people)

Sauce:
Tuna, 170g (in olive oil), chopped finely
Capers, 2 tablespoons, chopped finely
Mayonnaise (or creme fraiche), 150g
Anchovies, if you like them - not something we're keen on

Beef (or other meat):
10-12 thin slices of beef

(doesn't really need seasoning)

Preparation

• Mix all the sauce ingredients together - easiest done in a blender if you have one.
• Layout beef on a serving platter, slightly overlapping.
• Dress with a thickish layer of the sauce, then leave to come to room temperature.
• Serve the platter in the centre of the table, and allow people to help themselves.

Accompaniments

Boiled potatoes work well, or saute (my preference) - again left over from the roast.
A fresh green salad with cucumbers and tomatoes works well.

It's a fab dish for a hot summers day, and a very tasty way of using up leftover beef. I must admit I was a bit suspicious when the Italian first suggested this dish many years ago, but have enjoyed it many times since. I do urge you to give it a try, hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised.