Two Pasta Dishes

I should go to Moen's more often. I suspect the reasons I don't is my bank balance and my chronic inability to resist foodie goodies. God has clearly written me off as an atheist as if he didn't want to lead me into temptation then he'd never have let me walk passed this fabulous shop two or three times a week. I am, as they say, like a kid in a sweet shop.

I did well, though, yesterday, escaping having bought what I went in for and nothing else. The sausages were huge, an inch or more thick and a foot in length. Deep purple-red and smelling sweetly of fennel they were just what I wanted for supper. Rigatoni con pomodoro e salsiccia is a wonderful dish, a more exciting version of Spag Bol with a fancy-dan name and several layers of extra flavour. It's basically just a ragu but using those brilliant sausages split open and broken up rather than boring old mince. Slow cooked with wine and tomatoes until thick, dry and concentrated, before being enriched with cream and nutmeg, it makes a deeply comforting meal and a little goes a long way. Those four oversized sausages would have fed six hungry people.

The inspiration had come from a Friday visit to Jen's local Italian in Hammersmith and a chance to eat their parpadelle al lepre - thick, wide pasta ribbons with a sweet, gamey hare sauce. One of the great things about this place is the chance to eat a classic Italian dish that you have read about but never tried. Last time, it was a classic osso buco with risotto milanese, this time the hare. The sausage was loose and wet, like a sloppy gravy, and flavoured well by the humble carrot. It's soft sweetness adding to the meaty hare. It reminded Jen of the veal breast and carrots we ate in Paris the day after the wedding last year. A case of the soffrito becoming the star. Boiled beef and carrots may be great, slow cooked hare and carrots with silky, expertly made homemade pasta might just be even better.

Moules Mariniere

I like authenticity. Some dishes should be scared. For lunch I decided to cook Moules Mariniere, and reached for the French cooking bible, Larousse, to see what its - and therefore the definitive - rules are.

I'm in luck, the book's recipe largely agrees with my own thoughts: no cream but lots of butter, shallots to start, parsley to finish and an all important reduction of the sauce after you have lifted the open mussels out.

We disagreed on one thing, though. Garlic. Larousse says no. I say yes. Definitely yes. I reach for a couple of juicy cloves and bash them on the board.

As I said, I still like authenticity, just not as much as I like garlic.

When the moon hits the sky...

...like a big pizza pie, That's Amore.

I adore pizza. For a bread obsessive who is more than a little partial to tomatoes and cheese, it is damn near perfect food. My obsession is relatively recent though; the pizza of my childhood was either the cardboard monstrosities made by the awful Deep Pan Pizza Company or my mother's well meaning but misguided efforts that consisted of a tray of bready wholemeal base topped with cheddar and green peppers. It probably came out of a Crank's vegetarian recipe book, which should tell you all you need to know. Any passing Neapolitan would have been mortified by the sight it. But hey, there weren't many passing Neapolitans in 1980s Worcester. The nearest we came was the multi-coloured ice cream Dad would serve up for dessert.

I'm not sure when I realised that pizza was one of the Greatest Things Ever but now I relish it with the sort of fervour only a convert can muster. I can sense the pilgrimage to Naples getting closer all the time. In the meantime we have two very good, unpretentious pizzeries nearby. Lavender Hill's Donna Margarita and Earlsfield's La Pernella. For what it is worth, the great Dan Lepard eats at the former and rates it as London's best.

Friday night found us in La Pernella, we turned up at 10 half-expecting a polite what-time-do-you-call-this but instead were welcomed like the family's fifth cousins twice-removed. Red wine, bruschetta, antipasti and a sensational half-metre pizza came to £34. We left happy with the bells ringing ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling, as we sang 'Vita Bella'...