One thing I’d never done, though, is to make my own pasta. I’d kind of lumped it with making pastry as one of those things I don’t do so well, and there are perfectly acceptable alternatives available from the shops.

As you may have guessed, that argument doesn’t really rub in my kitchen, so I bit the bullet and bought myself a machine and all the OO flour, semolina and the nice fresh eggs that you need.

First mistake – I went against the advice I’d read in many places on the Web. I thought I’d dip my toe in the water with a cheapo Chinese copy of the Italian original from Argos, thinking it would survive long enough for me to figure out if I would use it. The machine didn’t last the day out. Clank!, it went. Crunch! Click, click, click as I turned the handle. But, most satisfyingly, Crash! as it hit the bottom of the bin.

Second mistake – not realising how many football pitch lengths of space you need to roll the stuff out. Just not possible in our kitchen. And it’s not the smallest around.

Third mistake – trying to clean the machine for the first time in the same session as we actually wanted to make and eat a meal of pasta. We finally ate at around 10:30pm, with me feeling exhausted and grumpy.

It’s back to the pasta from the deli for me.

How do they do it in restaurants? Or is it a variety thing like the strawberries we get these days in the shops that never give up their hulls cleanly?

I remember the days…

Any suggestions, oh knowledgeable reader?

So I’ve done the next best thing, and taken a long weekend off. And guess what I’m going to do? Yep – cook, eat, drink and be merry. And maybe even visit a restaurant or two.

Now, that’s a weekend

Even a cooking fiend like myself gets overwhelmed and to the stage where he can’t really think about making something really nice.

So, last week we had Sunday lunch in a very nice place in Swanage. If you find yourself in that neck of the woods, try the simple fresh food at the Moonlight Bistro. They were kind enough to serve us a couple of Moby Dick-sized sea bass off the evening menu.

Dessert was some fantastic sorbet from the local producer, Purbeck Ice Creams (Dairies? – someone tell me which is right). Somehow or other, you just have to try their Elderflower flavour – just fantastic!

And, as if someone had been listening in on my brainwaves, when we went to our favourite local place, the Levant, last night, we were told they were just about to stock the very same stuff.

Life is good!

Details:
Moonlight Bistro
67 High Street
Swanage
Dorset
BH19 2lY

Telephone 01929 475615

I’ve been working all this weekend on a rush job for a client, so for lunch yesterday I grabbed some sushi from Marks & Spencer (more about sushi very soon) and took it on to the beach, down by the pier. While sushi is a great sit on the beach food (just don’t let it sit in the sun), I wish someone in Worthing offered the proper Bento Box thing.

Then, last night, we put a disposable barbecue and some of our favourite M&S venison burgers on our bikes, and cycled off to Goring Gap and watched the sun go down over a couple of beers.

The atmosphere was really relaxed with us as the oldest people around – the rest were groups of what appeared to be post-exam chilled teenagers and students. That was, until a van full of police officers turned up and started giving the kids a hard time over their beers and barbecues.

We left. The bubble had burst, and we wondered why the police had to be so heavy-handed. If I’d had been one of the kids, I’d have been mightily fed up. But then the police attitude could be par for the course around here. I just don’t know.