Food & Drink

Devon Carbonara

Hello Links readers! Carbonara is a super, classic Italian recipe, basically made with cured pork cheek, eggs and pecorino cheese. Italians, you know, are quite obsessed about their rules for preparing food and like to follow ‘granny’s recipes’. Even when the local food is amazing in different parts of the world, Italians still try to search out an Italian restaurant. You could say our traditions have stifled our curiosity. Fortunately, my job made me travel and I tasted everything I came across (I’m a complete food addict). I’m proud of my Italian roots and to have been trained by some great Italian chefs, but the world has so much to offer, and mixing different ingredients and traditional methods is the key to food heaven. We came to West Devon in August 2020 and I have discovered a chef’s paradise of fantastic meats, veg, cheese and fish - this area is magic! Here is my Devon Carbonara recipe, and all the ingredients come from this beautiful and rich land. The seafood version is also amazing and very easy to prepare.

Ingredients (Serves 4 people)

500g spaghetti or rigatoni 300g unsmoked lardons 5 egg yolks 280g Sheep Rustler cheese (semi-hard ewe’s milk cheese) Black pepper Salt and extra virgin olive (EVO) oil Method

Bring a pan of water to the boil, and add salt (half the amount you would usually add). Add the pasta and cook it for 3 minutes less than the cooking time indicated on the packet. Preheat a frying pan with a glug of EVO oil. Add the lardons and cook until crispy. Beat the yolks in a bowl and mix with the cheese and fresh cracked pepper. Drain the pasta and add to the pan with the bacon and continue cooking for a further 2 minutes. Add 2 cups of pasta water and stir until al dente. Off the heat, add the egg mixture and some more pasta water. Stir until creamy.

Serve on a plate with more cracked pepper and cheese. Enjoy! Seafood variant:

Instead of bacon, you can use two fresh mackerel fillets or some mixed seafood. Just stir fry the fish with some garlic and sprinkle with fresh parsley to serve. It is just amazing! PS: I also have a vegan version which I will share with you in another issue - and don’t worry it is packed full of flavour! For more information see our article about Davide in Local People, and for more recipes visit Facebook: italianjack; or book an Italian Jack evening meal at www.italianjack.co.uk or contact hello@ italianjack.co.uk or 07745 934897.

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Champagne was a ‘happy accident’

Champagne plays a part in most festivities, so I thought I’d relate the history of this famous wine, which almost certainly began with a happy accident! The Romans began organising viticulture in Champagne in the 3rd century. Because it was only just warm enough to ripen the grapes the wines tended to be acidic, so Champagne was still and acidic for centuries. Legend suggests that Dom Pierre Perignon, a French Benedictine Monk, ‘invented’ the drink at the abbey of Hautvilliers in 1697. He apparently discovered a bottle of still wine that had fermented again in the bottle, trapping carbon dioxide and creating bubbles. ‘Come quickly I am tasting the stars!’ he apparently called to his fellow monks, before deciding this was too good not to repeat. It’s a lovely story and may even be true, but in fact sparkling wine was first properly recorded in 1531 — though once again monks were responsible. Benedictines at the Abbey of St Hilaire produced Blanquette de Limoux at that time, by the simple expedient of bottling the wine before fermentation ended. Champagne was quite sweet for many years. It wasn’t until 1846 when PerrierJouet decided not to sweeten his wine when exporting to England that drier wines became fashionable — he even coined a new term — Brut. The latest trend is NOT to add any sugar to the wine during the second fermentation. This results in a very dry, even austere, style of wine with between 0 and 3 grams of sugar (Brut is 6-12 grams) - so be wary as they’re not to everyone’s taste. Champagnes and other sparklers are normally labelled ‘Brut Nature’ or ‘Brut Zero’. Curiously, the term ‘Methode Traditionelle’ (the practice of fermenting a wine in a barrel or tank and then fermenting it a second time in a sealed bottle) was coined by an English physicist called Christopher Merrett several years before Dom Perignon even arrived at his abbey. This was the time when glass-blowing in England produced bottles capable of withstanding the pressure contained in a fermenting bottle of wine. The French couldn’t produce such bottles and some historians even believe the English may be the real inventors of sparkling wine (just don’t tell anyone French!). Global warming has caused significant problems in Champagne. Temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees in 30 years. To put this in perspective the harvest has moved forward 2 weeks, and the balance of acid and sugar in the grapes is becoming harder to achieve. Those of you who have been watching the rise of English sparkling wine may be aware that the south coast of England is now arguably the best place to grow grapes for Champagne - is that a silver lining or not?

Dave Anning

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