Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

… in “An A-Z of Pasta”, life is too short to make tortellini with 3cm squares of pasta. I’m not even at all convinced it’s a good size: the finished tortellini are too small in my opinion—and I don’t see that an adult can properly shape the tortellini as they are too small to fit round my fingers. After making 62(!) from the first sheet of pasta I rolled out, I switch to 5cm squares. Much better! 4cm squares could be OK but my pasta machine produces 15cm wide sheets so there’d be a lot of waste. I have made tortellini before, but that was a long while ago and from a different recipe. I doubt it suggested such small squares as I’m sure I’d have remembered having to up the size.

The filling, btw, was ricotta, pea and mint. But served in a chicken broth, so a non-veggie meal over all.

And two amusing tales relating to the chicken stock I made. First, these chicken wings had their wingtips! I guess I’ll know which ones to choose next time I fancy boning any out to stuff. Perhaps after Ballymaloe but, then, perhaps not… Second, it’s still cold enough outside for an initial cooling of the stock before putting it in the fridge. The chicken-y smell distracted our neighbour’s cat from her usual hobby of terrorising the birds on our feeders, Not a sustainable distraction, unfortunately.