Spiralizer Week: Day One: Puttanesca Sauce

My middle sister gave me a Spiralizer for Christmas, so I decided that this week would be Spiralizer Week, and every day I would do a different recipe from a beginner's Spiralizer recipe blog: a nice way to ease back from all-salads into slightly more filling food, while hopefully still shedding a few Christmas pounds. We started off well with this "spaghetti" alla puttanesca. You could, of course, make it with normal pasta, and it might fill you up for a little longer.

Ingredients

• 1 clove of garlic
• 2-3 anchovy fillets
• 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp capers, chopped if they are large
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2-3 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup sliced olives
• 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
• 2 zucchini, spiralized into thin noodles

Method

Crush the garlic into a frying pan with a little oil (use olive, or if you prefer, anchovy oil from the jar) and snip in the anchovy fillets, then fry over a low heat until the anchovy has dissolved and the garlic has softened. Pour in the tin of tomatoes and add the parsley, capers and olives; season with chilli flakes, if using, or black pepper. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until liquid from the sauce has completely evaporated.

Once the sauce is dry, add the zucchini noodles, and cook until they have *just* softened and enough water has come out to make the sauce a little liquid. Stop cooking immediately and serve the noodles with the sauce.

Kangaroo "Abritzi"

Heresy, perhaps. But I found the substitution for the traditional lamb to be quite delicious, with an even softer and more melting texture. There was less of the punchy gaminess so the seasoning was better with slightly less lemon juice and more black pepper. Kangaroo fillets are also much easier to prepare than lamb rump, as they are completely lean, so there is no thick or gristly fat to cut off. Thus this is a speedy version -- at least, if you live in Australia and have access to kangaroo fillets.

Caponata (Aubergine and Tomato Stew)

The title is totally unprepossessing, and I'm sure memories of poorly-cooked ratatouilles are sending you scrolling away from this screaming. HOWEVER! I implore you to stay. Try this recipe! Particularly in summer, when aubergines and tomatoes are in plentiful supply. The capers and olives make a fantastic contrast with the fresh vegetables, and it's amazingly filling as well. Yes, it's Jamie Oliver. Yes, olive oil must be glugged. But you won't be disappointed with a new away to jazz up those med veg.

Ingredients

• 2 large aubergines, cut into large chunks
• 1 heaped tsp dried oregano
• 1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• 1 small bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and stalks finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons salted capers, rinsed, soaked and drained
• 1 handful green olives, stones removed
• 2-3 tablespoons best-quality herb (or at least wine) vinegar
• 5 large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons slivered almonds, lightly toasted, optional

Fry the aubergine and oregano in olive oil on a  high heat for around 4 or 5 minutes, giving the pan a shake every now and then. (Depending on the size of your pan you may need to cook the aubergine in batches.) When the aubergines are nice and golden on each side, add the onion, garlic and parsley stalks and continue cooking for another couple of minutes. Feel free to add a little more oil to the pan if you feel it's getting too dry.

Throw in the drained capers and the olives and drizzle over the herb vinegar. When all the vinegar has evaporated, add the tomatoes and simmer for around 15 minutes or until tender. Taste before serving and season if you need to with salt, pepper and a little more vinegar. Drizzle with some good olive oil and serve sprinkled with the chopped parsley leaves and the almonds if you like.

Roast Green Peppers with Giant Cous-Cous

Green peppers have a hard time competing with their red, orange and yellow brethren. Chefs are full of admonitions to 'never ever' substitute green peppers for red, and it's understandable: the flavour is noticeably different, being less sweet and grassier. However they're indispensable for the gorgeous lamb abruzzio and a staple of my Mexican cooking. Tonight I wanted to try stuffing and roasting them, but using flavours which would complement their green taste. I used a Nigel recipe for inspiration, but like the risotto I made earlier in the week, substituted most of the ingredients. To figure out the flavours, I started with the 'abruzzio' flavours, then subtracted the lamb (I try to eat veggie on days when I'm not exercising) and replaced its umameness with a little anchovy.

If you can't get giant cous-cous (and I have to say, I was amazed to find it in my local market), I'm sure normal cous-cous would work just fine. You would, however, miss out on the joy of the escapee giant cous-cous, which leap from the peppers onto the hot roasting tray, and bake through to produce joyous bonus crunchy popcorn-like additions. This recipe makes enough for two hungry people, or in our case, enough for dinner and then lunch the next day.

Ingredients:

• 200g giant cous-cous (also called pearl cous-cous, or mograbiah)
• six spring onions
• a large handful of mint
• six large salted anchovy fillets
• 10-12 olives
• four medium to large green peppers
• half a lemon
• 100ml sour cream
• 1 tsp paprika

Cook the cous-cous according to its packet instructions; mine didn't have any but took about 20 minutes to become tender. Finely chop the spring onions and fry in a little olive oil until softened. Zest the lemon, chop the mint, halve the olives, and crumble the anchovies; turn off the heat and add them all to the spring onions, then season with black pepper. (You probably won't need salt because of the olives and anchovies.) Drain and tip in the cooked cous-cous and squeeze over the lemon, then gently combine.

Cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds and pith, but leave the stalks on. Lay out in a large baking tray and fill with the cous-cous combination. Cover loosely with foil and roast in a 200C oven or on a hot bbq for 35-40 minutes, until the peppers are cooked through and beginning to caramelise at the edges. Stir the paprika through the sour cream and serve with the cooked peppers.

Baked Chicken with Tomatoes and Olives

We bought a whole chicken this week, which contributes to over half of the meals in the week: a hearty chicken stock for a perfect risotto, the bony wings and legs for some finger-licking marinaded bbq goodness, and the thighs and breasts for a big bbq'd tray of goodies which easily serves us for two nights. I went for a very calm carb to contrast the strong, acidic flavours: a handful of breadcrumbs fried in olive oil stirred through some tiny pasta, for a nice contrast in textures.

Ingredients:

• Two chicken breasts and thighs, or 500g of chicken pieces
• five large tomatoes
• a small lemon
• a generous handful of olives
• half a head of garlic

Cut the tomatoes into quarters and pit and halve the olives. Peel the garlic and crush lightly; halve if large. Pop the chicken, tomatoes, garlic and olives in a large roasting tray, squeeze over the juice of the lemon, and season with salt and pepper. Roast (~200C) or bbq (moderate) for 30-35 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the tomatoes are blackened at the edges.

Lamb 'Abritzi' with Courgettes

There's a huge glut of courgettes in the market at the moment, so we're incorporating them into everything we eat! This is the same classic family recipe as ever, but with one of the peppers replaced with a deseeded sliced courgette. The flavours work really well together! But I'm not sure I'd replace the green pepper completely.

BBQ'd Lamb 'Abritzi'

We're finishing off the last of the very-reasonably-priced lamb chops (we froze half for later) and I felt like giving a classic family recipe an Australian spin. We put some brown rice on, then cut the peppers into fat strips and BBQ'd them with the lamb chops. Quickly halved some olives and squeezed some lemon juice, ready to go over the peppers hot off the barbie. Wonderful! And even faster than the 'normal' version.

BBQd Beetroot and Feta

I often roast beetroot in the oven, add some feta at the last minute, and toss it in a salad with leaves and puy lentils. Tonight the SO put the beetroot cubes in foil parcels on the BBQ and they came out splendidly. He perhaps added the feta a tad early, as you can see from its slightly mangled appearance! Cous-cous with raisins and some chopped olives, sundried tomatoes and skinned, roasted red peppers made up the accompaniment. Just in time to eat while playing some turns on the online Race for the Galaxy with friends waking up in Cambridge :)

Cannellini and Coppa salad

I followed this one from Nigel, and was a little disappointed. The flavours just didn't quite mesh the way I expected them to. It's possible that we added way too much spinach, but his portion sizes were just tiny, and I knew we'd be hungry, so I added eight handfuls instead of four. Or maybe we should have used watercress instead, which would have had a lot more flavour. I also found that the olives were so big that we ended up eating them individually, and they rather overwhelmed the subtle cannelloni and herbs. I've added a few suggestions to modify the original recipe, especially the dressing, which was much weaker than it should have been. I think the whole thing would work better with tomatoes instead of olives; maybe I'll try that in future. Oh and croutons are very good with this, preferably toasted with garlic since there's none in the dressing.

Ingredients:

This does NOT look like the version in Kitchen Diaries.

• a tin of cannellini beans
• a bag of mixed spinach, watercress and other flavourful leaves
• a large handful of basil leaves
• 75g thinly sliced coppa or prosciutto
• a handful of black olives, pitted and quartered, or, a handful of cherry tomatoes, pitted and quartered
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

Drain the beans, wash and spin the salad and basil leaves, and shake up all the dressing ingredients. Nigel suggests marinading the olives in the dressing but I found it made absolutely no difference since olives are so strongly-flavoured anyway. I'd just toss the whole lot together and top with croutons. Should be better with the mods :)

Pissaladiere

I'm re-purposing snorkel gear in the kitchen.

Ma plus jeune soeur a passé les derniers mois à Paris sur un placement, au cours de laquelle elle a échantillonné de nombreux délices français, y compris de grandes quantités de vin rouge ;) Son petit ami sait une excellente recette de la pizza, de sa région à la frontière espagnole.

Translation: this is totally delish!

Ingredients:

• your favourite pizza dough
• three large white onions
• 20-25 anchovies
• 3-4 tablespoons of capers, drained
• a couple handfuls of green olives, halved
• a few pinches of dried oregano

YUM.

Finely slice the onions, preferably into rings. Fry gently for 15 minutes, until golden, caramelised and soft. Roll out your pizza dough as thinly as possible and place on a pizza stone. Was the anchovies if they are particularly salty. Lay over the fried onions, then decorate with the rest of the ingredients, sprinkling over the oregano at the end, then season well with black pepper. Bake for 15 minutes or so, until the pizza has risen and the onion edges are just beginning to curl.

Margaret River Tabbouleh

We had an absolutely brilliant time in Margaret River, mostly cooking in the townhouse at the rather excellent resort at which we stayed. There was a shared barbecue next to the pool, which we made full use of, especially BBQing some really tasty steaks. We also made lots of salads, and had big French-style lunches - well, we eat less cheese nowadays! Mum made a great tabbouleh, which we served with roast red peppers, a cabbage and apple salad and a simple green salad.

Ingredients:

• 300g cous-cous (dry weight)
• 100g olives
• a block of feta (~150g)
• a tin of chick peas
• flat-leaf parsley
• juice of a lemon

Cook the cous-cous according to its packet instructions. Stone and halve the olives, and break the feta into small crumbly pieces. Drain the chick peas and finely chop the parsley. Combine the cooked cous-cous and everything else together and serve! Also keeps for a few days in the fridge.

Another Post-Deli Salad

Yet again we returned from our foraging at Swansea St Market, laden with goodies, tempted to throw them all into one giant bowl of goodness. So we did!

Ingredients

• 1-2 slices of bread
• 100g marinaded octopus, cut into bite-size pieces
• 3-4 leaves of cos lettuce, sliced width-wise
• two roasted peppers, torn into strips
• a handful of olives, destoned
• a handful of pumpkin seeds
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Set the oven to 200C. Cut the slices of bread into cubes and toss with olive oil and black pepper, then lay out in a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden and crispy. Dry-fry the pumpkin seeds, stirring occasionally, until they begin to pop, then remove from the heat. Whisk the dressing ingredients together and adjust to taste. Combine everything together in a big salad bowl and serve!

Post-Deli (Octopus) Salad

We went food-shopping in the morning - I love the market near us - and bought loads of lovely food. We were heading out again later for a heavy meal so I whipped together a quick and tasty salad for lunch. I doubt anyone would have all of these ingredients to hand midweek, so it's very much a post-weekend-deli-shop kind of meal.

Ingredients:

• a few handfuls of small pasta (I used tiny macaroni)
• a handful of asparagus
• one ripe tomato
• a heart of lettuce or a small gem lettuce
• a handful of olives
• 150g marinaded octopus
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 generous tsp dijon mustard
• a few shavings of Parmesan cheese

Boil the pasta according to its packet instructions, until al dente. Cut the asparagus into bite-sized pieces and steam above the pasta for 4-5 minutes, until green and tender. Chop the tomato into small pieces and shred the lettuce. Pit the olives and halve (or halve and pit, if you don't have an olive pitter!). Cut the octopus into bite-size pieces. Whisk together the oil, vinegar and mustard, taste, adjust and season. Toss the salad with the dressing and serve with a few shavings of Parmesan scattered over.

A French-ish Salad

The weather has taken a turn for the hotter - MUCH hotter. Yesterday we feasted on Thai beef salad in a comfortable 28C; today the mercury hit 34C and we took beef satay to a riverside barbecue. All beefed out and sunstroked at home, we wanted nothing more than a super veggie hit - preferably with a salty, mustardy dressing. I whipped up a French "ish" salad; all of the ingredients are as  you'd expect to get in Provence... but I'm not sure the serving style there would be quite so "rustique".

Ingredients

• 10 quails eggs, or two hen's eggs (Yes, yes, I'm the sort of person who just has quail's eggs lying around in the pantry. Deal with it.)
• two white potatoes, scrubbed
• half a bunch of asparagus
• a tomato
• a few giant leaves of lettuce
• a handful of olives
• a couple of anchovies
• a handful of sprouting seeds or other mild lettuce
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• juice of half a lemon
• one generous tsp dijon mustard
• one flat tsp grain mustard
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

Simmer the eggs for 5-10 minutes, until hard-boiled, then run under cold water, peel, and slice in half. Slice the potatoes into thick rounds, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, until tender. Snap the asparagus and cut into bite-sized pieces, and steam for five minutes, until tasty and bright green. Halve the tomato, slice again lengthwise, then cut into thin slices. Pit and halve the olives (olive-pitter from the wedding list is AWESOME). Roughly shred the lettuce, and add with the anchovies and the rest of the solid ingredients to a nice big salad bowl.

Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, mustards and vinegar together in a jug or jar, then taste and season. Pour over the salad and toss well, then serve immediately.

Quick Roast Lamb and Cauliflower Quinoa

We had some lamb rumps to eat tonight; I arrived home late after a seminar and realised I hadn't done any preparation, but that the lamb would be better-tasting today than tomorrow. I browsed the internet looking for things I could make with ingredients I had, but couldn't find anything that I wanted. Eventually I went back to the fridge, looked through and picked out things that I wanted, and that I thought would go well.

In the garden we have a mint plant which grows enormously this time of year, and it has giant, coarse leaves that you can't eat raw. I thought that would go well with some lemon, and chanced some green olives and coriander in a quick herb rub. We had potatoes last night, and I didn't have time for brown rice, so I decided to break out the quinoa - I'm always pleased when I cook it, but often forget that I have it! With some fattened raisins and some quickly stir-fried vegetables, it made a pleasing accompaniment to constrast the lemony herb rub and deep savoury lamb. A delicious, entirely improvised meal that took just half an hour to prepare.

Ingredients:

• 400g lamb rump
• a few green olives
• a small handful of mint
• a small handful of coriander
• juice of half a lemon
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 200g quinoa
• a small handful of raisins or sultanas
• 2 spring onions
• 5-6 cauliflower florets

Preheat the oven to 220 C. Remove any large pieces of fat from the lamb rumps, and place in a small oven-safe dish. Blitz the olives, mint, coriander, lemon juice and cumin seeds very briefly in a blender, to make a coarse rub. Scrape this over the lamb and turn the pieces in it, pressing it in and making sure they are all covered. Roast in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning once, until cooked on the outside and pink on the inside. Rest for 5 minutes before slicing into bite-sized pieces.

Meanwhile, set the quinoa cooking according to its packet instructions (I use 2:1 water:quinoa, simmer for 10 minutes then switch off and allow to absorb the remaining water). Soak the raisins in a little boiling water for 5-10 minutes until plump, then drain. Finely slice the spring onions into strips, and the cauliflower into thin slices. Stir fry in a little olive oil for 6-7 minutes, keeping on the move the whole time so that the vegetables cook through, and remove from the heat once they pick up a little colour on the edges. Combine the quinoa, vegetables and raisins, and serve the lamb on top, with any juices from the pan drizzled over.

Lamb Chops and Beetroot Tzatziki

This is a dish we frequently eat in the spring, when British lamb is cheap and delicious, and beetroots can be dug young and sweet. Apparently 'Lambing Live' is actually reducing the sales of lamb this year, and people find them too cute to eat. Sales of chicken and beef are up... how hypocritical! Without  a demand for lamb as a meat, there wouldn't be much lambing going on in the UK at all...

I like to vary the filling for this dish depending on whatever I have to hand. A tin of chickpeas, some leftover roast potatoes, some blanched broad beans, etc. Just fry with a bit of garlic, yum! Likewise with the tzatziki, if you don't like beetroot, more chopped mint or fresh coriander works fine - although it won't be such an attractively bonkers magenta. Back in Cambridge now - so this serves two!

Ingredients:

• Four lamb chops
• soy sauce
• juice of half a lime
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 100g mushrooms
• 2 cloves of garlic
• a handful of pine nuts
• 10 green olives
• 1 cooked or raw beetroot (not pickled)
• 2 tsp caraway seeds
• 200 ml natural yoghurt
• juice of half a lemon
• a handful of mint leaves
• 2-4 wholemeal pitta breads
• a few handfuls of spinach leaves

Pound the coriander seeds gently in a mortar and pestle. Put the lamb chops in a dish and splash with some soy sauce, the lime juice and the seeds; leave for an hour or while you prepare everything else.

Slice the mushrooms thickly and fry them in a few tsp of vegetable oil until golden on all sides. Turn down the heat and crush in the garlic, and add the pine nuts. Stir through a few times until the garlic is softened and the pine nuts have toasted. Halve the olives and add them at the end (I like to use chilli olives from the market for a bit of heat!)

Meanwhile, grate the beetroot into a medium pyrex bowl. Toast the caraway seeds lightly and crush in a mortar and pestle. Add these to the beetroot along with the yoghurt and lemon juice. Stir through and season with salt and black pepper. Grill the lamb at a high temperature for a few minutes on each side, until golden on the outside but pink in the middle.

Serve the chops with a hot pitta bread (or two) filled with spinach leaves, the mushroom mixture, a generous spooning of tzatziki and a few shredded mint leaves. This is very very messy to eat, so serve with napkins and a bowl to throw in the lamb bones and extra fat!

Focaccia

A classic Italian bread widely adopted in the UK, focaccia makes a lovely accompaniment, being soft, gently flavoured and of an open texture well-suited to mopping up juices or eating with soft cheeses. Perfect with the barbecue we held in some surprisingly beautiful April weather! Once again I prefer to use a small starter for this bread, as I find it gives a more rounded flavour and reliable result.

Yesterday I experimented with some toppings, and the recipe I give below includes an improvement over my results: increasing the flavour adhesion by kneading some topping back into the dough before adding the rest as topping. You could of course vary the topping, or make them without and they would be just as delicious. I also used a braid technique to open the texture and give a marbled result; instead one could make the classic 'slipper' shape with one rough strip of dough.

Ingredients:
For the starter:

• 50 ml boiling water
• 1 tsp sugar
• 100 ml cold water
• 1 tbsp active dried yeast
• 100g wholemeal bread flour

For the dough:

• 75 ml warm water
• 65g olive oil
• 75 ml white wine
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs
• 500g strong white bread flour

Topping ideas:

• 2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves stripped and roughly chopped or
• 100g of green olives, roughly chopped or
• 75g rehydrated sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped or
• a bunch of fresh basil or
• any combination of the above, or whatever you feel like!

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water, then reduce to blood heat with the cold water, and activate the yeast, giving it 10 minutes to develop a frothy head. Stir in the wholemeal bread flour and leave for a couple of hours in a warm place to rise - it will just about double in size.

In a breadmaker (or by hand in a bowl) combine the starter and the rest of the dough ingredients. Set to dough cycle or knead until soft and elastic. This should be a very soft dough. Allow the dough cycle to complete, or if kneading by hand, give it 30 minutes to rise, knock back, and another 30 minutes.

Lightly flour two baking trays. On a lightly floured surface, knead in half of your topping ingredient. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll and pull two into long strips, slightly longer than your baking tray size. Lay the two strips side by side and put half of the rest of your topping on top, then braid the two strips 'fatly' and roughly over each other with an open weave. Brush lightly with olive oil, transfer to a baking tray and lightly drape a warm damp teatowel over the top. Repeat for the other two strips and remainder of topping. If you like a salty result, you can add flakes of sea salt to the top, but do not mix this into the dough, or it will disrupt the yeast.

Preheat the oven to 190 C and allow the dough to double in size, then remove the teatowels and bake in the hot oven for 20 minutes, giving plenty of room in case the dough rises further. Serve warm and fresh! It keeps for a few days but it's unlikely there will be any left to save!

Lamb 'Abritzi'

My dad introduced me to this dish a few years ago, and I've absolutely loved it since. I hadn't experimented much with lamb, as it seemed to me you could only eat it after hours of cooking, or in tiny morsels from a quickly-grilled chop. But this dish was a revelation! I've spelled the name the way my dad says it, but I suspect that it's from the Abruzzo region of Italy; however the only lamb dishes I could find from that region were the aforementioned slow-cooking stews. This is anything but! It's very fast, and the lemony garnish contrasts beautifully with the earthy rare lamb.

Ingredients:

• 300g of fillet or boneless rump of lamb
• plain flour
• olive oil
• 1 large or 2 small green peppers
• 10 green olives
• one lemon

Slice the lamb into wide strips about 5 mm thick: about as thinly as you can without making any holes in the meat. Toss the pieces around in plain flour until they are thoroughly coated, and shake off the excess. Heat a heavy-based non-stick pan to a moderately high heat, and add some olive oil. When it shimmers, but before it smokes, add a few pieces of lamb. Cook until golden and sealed on one side (slightly less than 1 minute) then flip and cook on the other side for half the time. Cook in batches, shaking off excess oil and setting on a plate without kitchen paper.

Meanwhile, roughly dice the green pepper and quarter the green olives, lengthwise. Juice the lemon into a small bowl. When the lamb is done, wipe out the pan with kitchen paper and add a little olive oil to the pan. Gently sautee the chopped pepper for about five minutes, until slightly softened and a little caramelised around the edges. Return the lamb and any juices (which should be pinkish-red, not clear) to the pan, and add the lemon juice and olives. Turn the heat off and allow to heat through, giving a good grating of black pepper and a little salt. Toss and serve with crusty bread or brown rice.

Squid with Angel-hair Pasta

Mmm, squid are lovely. The fishmonger in Cambridge market does a nice selection; today he had both tiny ones and enormous ones! Cooking as I am for one, I bought two small ones. They'd be very usefully-sized for stuffing and roasting, but I find that kind of food a little fussy. Here I combine them with some Italian flavours for a light and refreshing pasta dish. I think traditionally the greens would form a separate course rather than part of the dish, but I wouldn't have been able to juggle two dishes and watch the final two episodes of Being Human!

This is a meal where there's a fair bit of preparation, then the actual cooking is lightning-fast, so do have everything ready before you fry the squid.

Ingredients:

• 2 small, 1 medium, or half a large squid per person
• 1 red bell pepper
• 5 sundried tomatoes in oil, or dry, rehydrated
• 5-6 green olives
• 2 stalks of swiss chard
• generous handful of fresh parsley
• 1 fat clove of garlic
• a chunk of parmesan
• 3 balls of dried egg vermicelli
• juice of 1/3rd of a lemon
• 1 handful fresh basil

Prepare the red pepper as for ruby salad: slice into halves or thirds, roast at 200 C for 35 minutes, skin side up, then remove from the oven and put in a pyrex bowl with a plate over the top, allowing to steam in its own heat for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, clean the squid thoroughly, removing the skeleton and internal organs, and giving it a good wash inside and out. Detach the tentacles and body, throwing away the mid section around the eyes. As finely as you can, slice the squid body into rings, and then the tentacles into slightly larger pieces. If you have an extremely large squid, you might want to slice it into thin strips rather than rings.

Roughly chop the sundried tomatoes and reserve in a pyrex bowl. Slice the olives lengthways into fat segments and add them to the tomatoes. Slice the stalk of the chard into thin segments and add to the same bowl, reserving the billowing green leaves. Finely chop the parsley and add to the bowl.

Skin the cooked red pepper and tear into long pieces, in the bowl in which it was steaming so as to keep the smoky juices. Put the garlic in a garlic crusher, ready to crush. Likewise, put the parmesan chunk in a mouli grater, or pre-grate if you don't have one. Put the vermicelli on to boil, as per the cooking instructions. Add 1 tsp olive oil to a heavy-based non-stick frying pan and raise to a high heat. You are now prepared!

When the oil begins to shimmer, but before it begins to smoke, throw in the squid rings and toss around to colour - cook in batches if you need to, so as not to overcrowd the pan. When the squid rings are all done, remove them, turn the heat down and add a touch more olive oil if you need to. Gently fry the chard mixture for 2 minutes, until the stems have just brightened. Roughly tear the chard leaves in and add a splash of water, stirring them around until they wilt, then return the squid and peppers to the pan and heat through.

Tear the basil into the pan and squeeze over the lemon juice, and a good grind of black pepper. Immediately serve over the drained angel-hair pasta and top with grated parmesan. YUM!