Off Topic The Goodhand Arms

I love mine - curry at least once a week and an amazing bolognese with beef steak and pork steak 'like my mamma used to cook' in about 6 hours on low each week [emoji16]

 

Recipe swap, anyone?

 

Let me find it for you:

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You can spot the new characters a mile off. For example, Whitworth [Ossie] is the one who 'jumps' at the sight of Aunt Agatha. Hugh Amitage, Drake, Morwenna and Sam are shown. Rowella I didn't spot.

 

I remember when they filmed that Robin Hood series with Michael Praed a few miles away near Mells. A girl I knew from college waith a massive Michael Praed crush was skulking around in Mells woods dressed in camo gear trying to get close to her hero. I gather security were pretty busy on set. She didn't think of it as creepy stalking, it was just a series of coincidences that she happened to be in the vicinity (behind trees, hidden in undergrowth etc) whenever any filming took place

 

Yes they also used Greyfield Wood at High Littleton for that series. Great story by the way!

 

My Mum would do it in a huge pot on the stove like they do [or did] in Italy. Me, I very, very rarely do meat tomato sauces anymore. Once in a blue moon I'll do it with Aberdeen Angus beef and it cooks in a fraction of the time as it did with the traditional cheap cuts of beef. These days I usually use aubergines with the tomato. Spectacular is a tame word for it. Also, I have recently discovered the best ever linguine in my life... from Lidl. Made in Italy, Bronze Dye, DeLuxe Linguine at 75p for 500g. Way better than De Cecco and all the exotic brands. It is taste and texture heaven. Of course people don't believe because it's so cheap. I've done side-by-side tests. It's not even close in the case of De Cecco.

 

Thanks Chilcs, I've got a million of them as I've kind of been around, and have many "unconventional" friends

 

Stephen Fry doing some excellent political piss taking at the Baftas.

 

Superb acceptance speech by Ken Loach for I, Daniel Blake.

 

Just watched A monster calls, superb film, really good performances all around - definitely one to watch

 

Just watched The Imitation Game. Cracking film, very well acted, and of course a fascinating story.

Slight *spoiler* here though - I'm now strutting around as the very first thing I said to my housemate was "look for the Heil Hitler as the first thing that'll bring a powerful man down is his hubris".

Now I guess it may have been more complicated than that, but there's nobody going to shake me of my belief that I could have cracked Enigma a whole lot quicker than Turing and his cohorts now!

 

OK, here's mine. Put all the raw ingredients for a beef stew in the slow cooker. Cook for between 8 and 16 hours. Serve on a plate.

Vin

 

Pound up a couple of anchovies and garlic cloves, stir the resulting mess into the stew when the meat goes in...brings an unbelievable richness to the gravy. I think its a umami thing. Smoked oysters work well with a good beef stew too - you can get tins of them from Waitrose, tescos n sainsbury's so probably the other ones too.

 

Why does linguine seem to taste so much better than spaghetti? Same sauce.

 

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Quite simply the nicest bolognese you will ever taste....and I'm a bolognese snob [emoji6]

I add a little garlic, and a spoon of marmite. Bellissimo

 

Same with rigatoni - so much better than penne. Must be the grooves.

 

Honestly.? I don't know for 100% sure, but it does in my opinion. Because there is more durum wheat in a strand of linguine than in the same length of spaghetti [for those who don't know, it's a lot thicker], there's going to be more durum wheat, which tastes way better than our wheat [Italian bread can be utterly, utterly gorgeous]. Also, because it's thicker, there's far more chance for bite and texture, especially if it is really good quality and bronze dye extruded [bronze dyes produce a rougher surface]. Linguine is able to capture the sauce better on its surface, especially if it is rougher. And because Linguine is thicker, it also has a greater good variation of bite from al dente** to evenly cooked through. The better quality the pasta, the longer the time window one gets to decide how one wants the pasta to turn out like. The ****tiest dried pasta/spaghetti/whatever has a tiny time window whereby it falls apart. The best stays together stably. So if you've paid a lot for your dried pasta and it goes from almost there to overcooked in a heartbeat or say less than 30 seconds, you've bought ****, whether you've paid 30p or £30. There's also the thing about mites, but I'm straying way off the question.

By the way, although I appreciate that some won't buy anything other than fresh pasta, I won't because, 1] it's inconvenient. What do you do if you don't want it all. It does go off or goes dry. Dried keeps practically forever. 2] you're paying for water. 3] I can make fresh pasta if I really, really want to. I've got a 'spag' machine.

That's all I've got.

**Several years ago I watched an Italian cookery programme featuring Rick Stein and the cook he was taking advice from said that there was an even less cooked variation where the pasta was really undercooked. She gave it a term that was nothing like al dente. I've never seen any evidence of that since.

 

Cheers. I prefer it too.

Gino D'Acampo says Italians use dried pasta, not fresh pasta.

 

I use fresh for filled pasta only, as its pretty much essential, dried for everything else. It does freeze if you have any leftover fresh though.

 

Ah my favourite discussion....pasta.

I seriously could eat it everyday. Whether it's tortellini with a touch of olive oil, bolognese or pesto.

My mother always insisted that we used dried pasta - though that could be because we had a supply from her uncle Gino in St Albans who owned a pasta factory. Cooking time is crucial for that perfect taste - tested by throwing a piece on the wall tiles to see if it sticks

I have been blessed with my genes; on the days I'm not eating pasta, I make a nice curry or get a takeaway - though for true Indian takeaway I need to get it from Southall, rather than the Bangladeshi food around here.

Hungry now and it's not even 8am