Hello National Day cooking fans,  

I always seem to start my cooking efforts off with this or a similar statement, but, yet again, I have to admit to deciding on this month’s dish because the picture on the recipe made it look so easy. I do not doubt that most cooks that get anywhere near my age will have had a go at cooking pasta at some point in their lives, and all you have to do is boil it with a bit of salt and water, right? Wrong!

It was only when I went to get the ingredients that this became more evident. After buying some, I realised that prosciutto is uncooked, dry-cured ham, which one of my taste testers does not eat. So, I found a new job for my air fryer. I put something I call chicken ham in the dehydrating setting until it looked like the stuff I had bought.   

I was also so hurried to get the ingredients that I grabbed a packet of tagliatelle instead of the fettuccine next to it on the shelf in the shopping isle I visited and realised when it was all too late. I had all the other ingredients ready for action.  

So, with what I had, I got to work and hit no other real snags until I realised that you are supposed to add the raw egg and cheese mixture to a hot pan containing the rest of the ingredients. 

I was prepared for either a scrambled egg mess or pasta steeped in a river of raw eggs, but I followed the recipe, and, according to my guinea pigs, it did work. So, apart from the fact that I did not use the right meat or pasta (the two principal ingredients of the dish), I did pretty well. I got the thumbs-up from those taste testers but did not tell them about all the substitutions…

For anyone who does not know, the internet tells us that Greece celebrates its Independence Day on March 25th.   While moussaka is likely to be the dish most associated with this part of the world, for those who are vegetarians, we have gone for the other dish most associated with that section of the globe: fasolada. I have checked; I have no pasta to get mixed up with any other kind.

See you on the other side of that particular cooking session.

CB, Lewisham. 

CB has found a few recipes for those who plan to cook like a Greek…

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