I know exactly why I decided to cook Penne Rigate alla Vodka this week.

It’s all the fault of C J Sansom.  If I’m alone in the kitchen for any length of time I’ll invariably start listening to an audio book.  This week it’s been ‘Dark Fire’.  Book 2 in a brilliant series.  It’s 1540 and Matthew Shardlake is working for Thomas Cromwell again.  I can’t help but know 1540 is the year the very non-fictional Lord Cromwell’s head was parted from his neck …  so there I am waiting for the axe to fall.  Literally.

Shardlake’s mission ..?

Well, Cromwell wants to discover the secret of Greek Fire.  Can he?  I’ll not spoil it for you, but an idle comment from a passing son ruined the suspense for me.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the journey.  Who put the boy in the well?  Why won’t Elizabeth speak?  And is Greek Fire really the new drink from Russia?

Which is how it happened I reached for the vodka bottle.

All I need to feed a family of seven.

The vodka in my cupboard is a British potato vodka.  It even comes with a union-jack-bow tied round the bottle neck.

I really do think you get what you pay for when it comes to dried pasta.  Sadly.  I like De Cecco and Garofalo.  Le Veneziana do a good gluten-free penne.

Begin by putting water on to boil.  It always takes far longer than I expect to get it up to an angry boil.  Lid on – will speed the process up.  (Aga:  bring it up to the boil on the floor of the Roasting Oven as that’ll keep the heat in your cooker.)

Allow 1 litre/1¾pints of water, minimum, for every 100g/3½oz pasta.  That’ll stop it sticking together.  Don’t add the salt yet.  And don’t add any oil.  There’s no point.  It’ll just float on the top.

Chop the ham into chunky cubes.

Chop some flat-leaf parsley.

The stalks can go in a freezer bag and be popped into the freezer ready for home-made stocks.

Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the ham, parsley and some tomato purée.  Give it a stir and let it cook away for ten minutes or so over a gentle heat.

Season with coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now it’s the vodka.  I like to cook my vodka ‘out’.  (If you want a stronger vodka flavour don’t add it now.  Mix it in with the cooked and drained pasta later, before adding it all to the sauce.)

When the vodka has all but evaporated, I add the cream.

And that’s the sauce done.

By now the water should be boiling.  Adding the salt now gets it swirling around the pan from the get-go – 10g/¼oz of salt per litre/1¾ pint of water.  It’s quite a lot, but it’s all the seasoning the pasta is going to get.  I was taught to think ‘salty like the mediterranean sea’.

Penne rigate is the traditional choice of pasta shape for this dish.  (Penne means ‘quills’ in Italian and rigate is the ridged version.)  Portion size depends on what you are doing.  I use 70g/3oz of dried pasta for a first course and 100g/3½oz for a main course.

After adding the pasta, quickly put the lid back on and bring it back to a rolling boil as soon as possible.  As soon as it is, lid off again.  My packet states a cooking time of 11 minutes – so I set the timer for 10.  Al dente  is the point at which the pasta is cooked through – no chalky centre – but there is still some ‘bite’.  I don’t think I’ve ever cooked my pasta for as long as the packet suggests.

Before you drain the cooked pasta – scoop out a little of the cooking water.  If you want to loosen the finished dish the starchy water is the perfect thing to use.

Tip the pasta into the sauce and stir together.

Transfer to a warmed serving dish.  Personally, I don’t serve ‘Penne Rigate in Vodka’ with parmesan as I don’t think it needs it.

All those ridges hug the sauce.  Delicious.

Eat.

Penne Rigate in Vodka

Serves 7

• 100g/4oz unsalted butter
• 2 thick slices of ham, flexible
• 4 tablespoons of tomato purée
• 2 tablespoons of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 10 tablespoons of double cream
• 6 tablespoons of vodka
• 700g/12oz penne rigate
• Salt and pepper

Start by getting the water for cooking the pasta on to boil.  It needs to be a fast, rolling boil.  Think ‘angry Mediterranean sea’.

Melt the butter in a large sauté pan.  Add the ham, the parsley and the tomato purée.  Cook over a gentle heat for about 10 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in the vodka and cook until it has evaporated.  Then add the cream and warm through before taking it off the heat.

Once the water is boiling, add the salt.  10g/2oz for every litre/1¾ pints of water.  Now add the pasta and give it all a stir.  Replace the lid and bring it back to a fast boil.  As soon as it’s boiling, remove the lid again.  You’ll need to stand by and give it the occasional stir.  (Aga:  Keep the lid on and put it into the Simmering Oven for the same cooking time as you’d do on the hob).  Don’t rely on the packet instructions as it’s often less.  Cook until al dente.

Scoop out a little of the starchy pasta water and reserve.  Use to thin the sauce, if necessary.

Drain.  Transfer the cooked pasta to the sauce and mix together.

Eat.

Print.

 

 

 

 

 

In my house, Good Friday isn’t ‘Good Friday’ without a Hot Cross Bun.  In an ideal world I would have posted this during the Easter holidays, but life happened … and I didn’t.  Having now downloaded all my photographs – I’ve decided not to worry about it.  After all, Easter happens annually so you’re going to need this next year.  Plus, if you leave the cross off, you’re left with a spiced fruit bun.  Nothing wrong with that.

I suspect one of the reasons they’re such an important part of English culinary tradition is that they were ‘restricted’.  In the 16th century when sugar and spices from the New World were becoming affordable for the middle classes, Elizabeth 1 issued an edict banning London bakeries from selling spiced buns apart from funerals, Good Friday and Christmas.  I hope it’s been repealed or there are all kinds of people not observing the ‘rule of law’.

Crossed buns go back far further than that though.  Pagan Saxons slashed their buns to honour Eostre.  That’s the goddess of spring and, more alarmingly from my perspective, fertility.  (That, incidentally, is the linguistic source of our word for Easter.  The French ‘Pâques’, the Spanish ‘Pascua’ and the Italian ‘Pasqua’ all have their root in the Jewish Passover – ‘Pesach’.)

Superstitions abound.  Personally, I don’t feel any need to hang a Good Friday baked bun in my kitchen to prevent fires – but you must do as you wish.  Nor do a keep a bun in my corn to keep weevils and rats at bay – but, then, I don’t have a barn of corn and I prefer not to think about rats.  Share a bun with a friend and your friendship will survive the year.  Take a bun to sea and your ship will be safe from shipwreck.

The cross, it seems, can signify pretty much everything from symbolising the suffering of Christ on the cross to letting the devil out.  I’m posting this on St George’s Day so I think I’ll stretch a point and say it’s in honour of the day and the English flag.

Over the years, I’ve fiddled about with pretty much everything.  I’ve played with the spices (cinnamon, saffron, mixed spice, nutmeg, mace, ginger and cardamon), added grated apple, citrus zests, soaked the dried fruit in both tea and alcohol – until the point I feel I’ve now settled.  I like my buns traditional.  Part of the charm for me is that I’m eating something my Great Grandparents would recognise.

I start by putting 300ml full-fat milk in a saucepan along with ½ cinnamon stick and 2 cloves.  Over a gentle heat, bring it to a point  where small bubbles are forming around the sides.  Remove from the heat, put a lid on it, and allow to infuse.

Meanwhile, I get my dried ingredients together.  That’s 500g of strong bread flour, 1 tsp mixed spice, ½ tsp ground cinnamon and ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg.  I sieve everything together.  On one side of the bowl I place ½ tsp salt and on the other I empty a 7g sachet of fast action yeast.  Then I add 50g caster sugar.

Then it’s back to the milk.  Depending on how distracted I’ve been it will now be gently warm to cold.  If it’s cold I bring it back to hand-warm and add cubed cold butter.  It melts immediately.  This is the moment to fish out the cinnamon stick and cloves.

Lightly beat two eggs together in a bowl.  Mix all the dried ingredients together and make a dip in the centre.  Pour in the combined eggs and mix together.  The easiest way is to form your hand into a claw and use small circular movements to bring the dry ingredients into the eggs.  (Truthfully, I’m right-handed – but needed that to work the camera.  This blogging is tricky!)

Once the egg is incorporated it’s time to add the milk.

The end result is a sticky dough.  Tip that out on to a lightly floured surface.

And knead.  At this point the two proteins (gliadin and glutenin) in my flour are matted together.  In ten minutes time they’ll have formed themselves into ordered straight lines and be the gluten that gives my bun its structure.

There are lots of variations in kneading styles and they all work – with subtle differences if you really get keen.  This is a traditional English kneading style.  You stretch the dough out with the heal of one hand and then roll it back.  Give it a 180° turn and go again.  Be careful not to add too much flour.  It will get less sticky the longer you knead.  Stop when you’ve got a smooth, elastic dough.

I tend to spritz a clean pyrex bowl with oil and place my dough to prove, covered, at room temperature.  If you need to slow things down you can pop your bowl in the fridge.

This is where the magic happens.  Yeast is a living thing and the holes are carbon dioxide supported by a web made up of all that hard-won gluten.  You know you are done when a gentle poke gives you an indent which recovers halfway-ish.

And then it’s the dried fruit.  I choose sultanas, currants and candied peel.

Candied peel can be hard to find it you don’t want to use one of those nasty ready-cut supermarket tubs.  I get mine (and a whole heap of other good things besides) from here.

I find it easiest to add the dried fruit and candied peel whilst the dough is still in the proving bowl.  Knead until everything is evenly distributed and set it aside to prove again.  Another hour or so and you are ready to shape your buns.

I weigh my dough and divide between 15.  It’s about 75g.

And shape into balls.

Lay them out onto a baking sheet, cover with a clean tea towel, and leave to prove for the final time.  Another hour – and the buns will just be touching.

Then it’s time to pipe the crosses.  My top tip is to start piping away from the bun.  Let the paste hug the sides as you work across in a grid.  I make my paste quite loose, as I prefer a less dominant cross.  (75g flour mixed with 7 tbsp of water.)  If you want a more defined cross add less water.

Bake in a  pre-heated oven – 220ºC/425ºF/Gas Mark 7 – for about 25 minutes.  Aga:  On the rack on the floor of the Roasting Oven for 15-20 minutes.

Warmed and sieved apricot jam is my first choice.  Second, is 1tbsp caster sugar dissolved in boiling water.  Glaze the buns immediately they come out of the oven.

(If you want to get-ahead, it’s better to freeze the buns unglazed.  Thaw and reheat for 5 minutes.  Then glaze.)

Warm from the oven, all they need now is lashings of salted butter.  Tomorrow they are better toasted.

Eat.

Hot Cross Buns

Makes 15

• 500g strong plain bread flour
• 300ml full-fat milk
• ½ stick of cinnamon
• 2 cloves
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• ½ tsp salt
• 50g caster sugar
• 50g cold butter, cubed
• 7g sachet of fact-action yeast
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 50g candied peel
• 75g currants
• 75g sultanas
• 2 tbsp apricot jam, warmed and sieved

Gently heat 300ml of milk with the cinnamon stick and cloves until bubbles appear around the edge.  Leave to infuse.

Put the flour, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, caster sugar, fast-action yeast and salt into a large bowl.

Add the cubed butter to the warm milk and let it melt.

Mix the dried ingredients together and make a dip in the centre.  Add the eggs.  Shape your hand into a claw and with circular motions bring the dried ingredients into the egg.  Then add the hand-hot milk and continue mixing until you have a sticky dough.

Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.  Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover and leave to prove for about an hour.

Add the dried fruit whilst still in the bowl and knead until combined.  Cover and leave to prove a second time.  Another hour.

Weigh the dough and divide into equal sized pieces.  Use a cupped hand to shape the buns and place on a lined baking tray.  Cover and leave to prove for a final hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 220ºC/Gas Mark 7/425ºF.  Make a flour/water paste – 75g flour to 7 tbsp water – and pipe the crosses.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  Aga:  On the rack on the floor of the Roasting Oven for 15-20 minutes.

Glaze with apricot jam whilst still warm.

Eat.

Print.