Phew!

Don't worry, you haven't missed anything particularly interesting, food-wise, while I was sweating away in that exam yesterday. It was just a vegetable soup on Sunday and the leftovers from that yesterday. The most exciting thing (which I don't say sarcastically - I really was disproportionately excited) was when my Risby Lincoln Longwool yarn came in the post - look!

I can't wait to turn that into something cosy! Sadly, Jean at church forgot to bring her bits and bobs so there was no knitting lesson on Sunday, but we'll let her off as it was one of those days... Besides, I've been looking into it and I'm almost confident that I already know all I need to follow a simple/easy level pattern.

Before I get going on that, I've got to make the curtains for S's bedroom. We moved in here in early August and she's been making do with some ill-fitting ones because her room has two windows and we've been unable to find any curtains she likes that are available in the right size, except when it was the only pair left! So she chose some fabric on ebay and I'm tasked with making the dashed things up. There's all that catching up to do on my other course as well, and the laundry. At least I did the floors this morning, that's one thing out of the way for a while!

It reminds me of the service for the blessing of the plough: there's a list of all the grand and noble things we do as people and communities, which ends with "but first, we must plough the fields". An earthy reminder of how important it is to return to the immediate, not to undervalue the mundane, daily tasks that keep us all alive and ticking over. Nor to undervalue those people who do them on behalf of the rest of us.

Anyway, we had a stab at making fresh pasta on Saturday for a venison ravioli dinner, so here's the report on that for you!

First I got S making the pasta. She's a reasonably competent cook: though prone to not bother cooking at all from laziness, when she makes an effort she can always turn out a good end product and the only supervision she needs is the reminder to clean up after herself! So we got a recipe for pasta dough from the BBC website and adapted it on the fly to Heckington windmill's flour.

This proved a challenge not least because this particular batch that we're on is a bit chaffy, on account of the poor wheat harvest last year meaning the local farmers couldn't spare us any but the stuff they couldn't sell to anyone commercial. We milled it, but what came out was unusable as wholemeal, though just about usable as white flour, once bolted. Our manager Jim has been on the case of getting some better grain, while we who bake with what's on offer have been... improvising.

Lacking a pasta machine, S just gave it some elbow grease with the rolling pin while I cooked some venison mince with onion, garlic, chicken stock and breadcrumbs (fresh - I keep the ends of the loaves I make and grate them into crumbs) seasoned with salt and pepper. S then assembled the ravioli...

...while I knocked up a basic tomato sauce for us to have with it. For this I finely chopped two small onions and heated them with some garlic until softened, roughly chopped about six tomatoes and bunged those in with it, then added some dried oregano and thyme (grown in the garden - about a teaspoon of each), about half a tube of tomato purée and a glass of water. I let that heat through and bubble a bit to get it to the right consistency, then threw in the meat mixture that was leftover from making the ravioli.

As that was going on, I was boiling the ravioli in a large pan along with a couple of corn cobs. Not having much experience with fresh pasta - and none at all at making it at home - I figured the "when it floats" rule would probably apply for knowing when it was ready. It seemed to work well enough, as we found when we'd assembled the meal into this:

And tucked in. Obviously, we slathered the corn cobs in butter with lots of freshly ground pepper mixed into it - the only way to eat them! S, not being used to the taste of fresh pasta, initially balked a bit, but soon got used to it and at the end we agreed it had been a satisfying and tasty meal. I'd estimate the cost per portion at somewhere between 2 and 3 quid. And I've made a mental note that I need to start making my own tomato purée. And since I made this meal I've discovered Squizito.... which is local-ish. Watch this space! :)

Now, back to the studying!