St Valentine’s 2024

Thought this one was pretty good – 1K Brioche de Provence, the fruit soaked in a good whack of Navy rum.

BUT … you know I’m always raving about Bethesda’s food hero Carrie Rimes – not just a BBC Food Producer of the Year, but THE BBC Food Producer of the Year, producing fabulous cheese a mere 500 yards from our house. We do ocassional swaps of bread for cheese. Well, last time she brought us ricotta which caused my ageing brain to flutter – what was it that we used to make with ricotta apart from ice cream … Manicotti!

Manicotti is a filled tubular pasta like cannelloni but stuffed with a mix of ricotta, eggs, parmesan, mozzarella and parsley. In the old days this would be special occasion, celebration scoff for us. Carrie’s ricotta arriving shortly before Valentine’s was a strong indication we should do it again.

Being a wise virgin I already had my home-made pasta in the freezer: all the other ingredients are staples in the household.

So, there’s no great skill involved here. Just a series of simple steps that take some time. Roll out the pasta and cut into 4″ squares and cook briefy in boiling water. Spoon filling onto the squares, roll and place in the baking dish on top of a light covering of tomato sauce. Cover with a coating of tomato sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan and bake.

Dug out our ancient, collapsing copy of Pasta! Pasta! to help the ancient, collapsing memory along. Well, the book is 46 years old, the memory rather older … Cost £1.50 in 1977 – just saw a copy on Amazon £108.95

Seriously good scoff.