Don't Sweat the Aubergine

leaf and salt (a quarter of a teaspoon, perhaps). Bring to a simmer, cover and cook as in the basic recipe ( see here ). When the rice is ready, discard the bay leaf and cardamom. Whittington recommends stirring in a knob of butter. Scatter the almonds on top before serving.
    Meat pilafs . Sri Owen has an Afghan recipe called Qabili pilaf. You make a basic stew ( see here ) by frying lamb pieces or chicken pieces followed by an onion, then adding salt and water, and covering and simmering for 40 minutes (the chicken will be ready in that time; the lamb may need longer). Drain the liquid, which will become the stock in which you cook the rice. Add some carrots, cut into matchsticks, to the meat and onions, as well as some raisins. Add, too, some cumin and saffron. Put the pan on the heat again, add the rice and turn it with the other ingredients; pour in enough stock just to submerge the ingredients, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer as above. For 4 to 6 people, Owen suggests 450g rice, 800g lamb or 1 jointed chicken (or 6 chicken portions), 1 onion, 2 or 3 carrots, 112g raisins, 2 tsp cumin and 1/4 tsp saffron.
----
P ASTA
----
    As pasta is now the default, easy, everyday meal of choice in so many households, offering advice on such matters as the size of the cooking vessel, the vigour with which the water should boil, and the addition to the water of salt may seem as affected as giving a detailed recipe for fish fingers – or as telling you, as I have already done ( see here ), how to boil an egg. Still, I shall risk giving offence
.
    I should guess that of all the recipes currently finding publication, pasta sauces occupy the largest category. The demand is so great that writers are under constant pressure to come up with new dishes, most of which are variations on ones below or elsewhere in this book.
Fresh pasta
    It’s fun, and satisfying, to make your own pasta; but it takes quite a lot of fiddly work, and requires you to clear half an acre of space to accommodate the drying pasta sheets. So I’m going to cop out and say that making your own pasta is a more committedly foodie operation than this book is designed to describe. Also, perfectly helpful instructions come in more specialist books (try
Marcella’s Kitchen
by Marcella Hazan) or with pasta-making machines.
Dry pasta
    What most of us use, at least 95 per cent of the time.
----
HOW TO COOK IT
----
    Bring a large pot of water to the boil. 1 Add salt, 2 and return to the boil. Tip in the pasta, 3 stir it, and cover the pot with a lid until the water comes to the boil again. Uncover, stir, and continue to cook at a rolling boil 4 until the pasta is
al dente
(with a slight firmness as you bite it). 5 Drain, and mix immediately with sauce, or with oil or butter. 6
----
WHY YOU DO IT
----
    1 • Large pot . Pasta, though not quite as demanding as rice ( see here ), is not entirely foolproof: it sticks together easily, and goes soggy and indigestible if overcooked. Giving it plenty of water to move around in – about a litre for each 100g pasta – is the first step in keeping it separate. The water will come to the boil faster if you cover the pan.
    2 • Salt . You don’t have to add it after the pan boils, though the water will come to the boil faster if you do, because salt raises the boiling temperature. You can be generous, using a teaspoon of salt, say, for each litre of water. It flavours the pasta and reduces stickiness.
    3 • What pasta, and how much? The best Italian brands are a lot better than anything else. De Cecco is a particularly good one. Don’t use the quick-cook stuff. About 125g for each person is a decent, main course quantity.
    4 • Rolling boil . A misguided pedant once wrote to the
Guardian
to tick off Richard Ehrlich, who had instructed readers to ensure that pasta water boiled rapidly. There was no difference in temperature between boiling water and fast-boiling water, the pedant wrote. True: but the temperature is not the point. The point is the water’s agitation, which helps to keep the pasta separate.
    If you put a lot of pasta into a little water, it will lower the water temperature to one considerably below boiling point, and might cause clumping. Even when you use a lot of water, it’s a good idea to give the pasta an initial stir to encourage it to separate. Putting the lid on the pot will get the water back to the boil more quickly.
    5 •
Al dente . Packet instructions on cooking times are