Yay, Sarah from Maison Cupcake has opened up a new round of Forever Nigella, a really popular blog event in which Nigella recipes old and new get a themed makeover. This month, excitingly, the theme is ‘Halloween Horrors‘ and Sarah has challenged us all to use our imaginations and create any Nigella dish we like, but we have to adapt it to make it suitable for Halloween in some way.
So, my interpretation might be a bit of a cop out, but we’re half way through half-term, we have a leak in the kitchen and so the mains water is off again, it’s cold and the heating is off too. And in my cold and grumpy state, I felt like making a big pan of Nigella’s Rapid Ragu from her Nigella Express book. It is really easy to make, you just need some garlic olive oil, cubed pancetta, minced lamb, a jar of caramelised onions, some chopped tomatoes and a can of lentils. Nigella suggests a splash of Marsala, but I didn’t have any of that so I just used any old sweet sherry in the cupboard, probably from last Christmas. You then just grate some bright orange cheese on top, et voilà.
Having made it, I did think to myself that this would be a great thing to have bubbling away on the stove, ready for post-trick or treating and so I have spooked it up…sort of. As my kids are really little, I didn’t want to make it too scary. Basically, that’s my excuse for having a brain-freeze lack of imagination.
Anyway, I hope it counts. Forever Nigella #9 is open until 1st November so if you can think of anything suitably spooky do join in!
I won’t reproduce the recipe as I hardly changed a thing, but you can find Nigella’s recipe for Rapid Ragu here. Nigella even has a nice Halloweeny background on her website for good measure.
