Boys Don't Cook

  Carbonara! I have it on good authority, from literally every Italian I have ever asked the question of (or taken to a UK based pasta restaurant for that matter!) Italian Carbonara sauce should NOT contain cream, milk, or any of the stuff that supermarkets put in the suspiciously chalk-white ‘carbonara’ sauce.  In fact it should have four ingredients: pasta, eggs, parmigiano cheese, bacon I had absolutely no idea about this, I turned my nose up at carbonara as a child because I didn’t like creamy sauces (I was a real problem eater, maybe because I didn’t know what went into food?) I didn’t like eggs, I didn’t like… well you get the idea.) It was actually the wonderful folks over at Two Chubby Cubs that opened my eyes to a real Carbonara. When I was trying to lose weight by sticking to the Slimming World diet. I swear I wouldn’t have even been able to even start that program without their brilliant blog, and I did lose a little weight as a result, but you can’t diet forever! ...

  Three's a party! One of the things I was very surprised to find when I started learning to cook, mad scientist style (throw things together, and inflict them on my long suffering wife/friends/family) is that behind a lot of global cuisine is a base of three basic ingredients, and that once you get started with these as a base, they drive almost everything you're cooking, from British stews, Italian ragu, Mexican Chili, even Indian cooking.  Most cultures have evolved some version of what I call the Holy Trinity (pardon my blasphemy vicar!) but is actually called --in French cuisine-- a Mirepoix (“mear-pwoh”, is how I say it, but don’t take my word for it). This is a base of three* (sometimes more) diced vegetables that can form the starter for a huge range of dishes and sauces, and more interestingly; every culture has their own take on this principle (even if they don't have their roots in Cordon Bleu ideas), usually in a ratio as: twice as much of part A as parts B and ...

Lets get saucy!  A lot of common 'white' sauces derive from a technique of combining liquid fats, with flour to form a Roux - then gradually stirring in liquid, to form a thick sauce. Lets start with the Béchamel sauce, the jumping off point for a host of classic (read: French) sauces