Quick San Lorenzo Lunch

Whilst watching the dire England performance against Scotland on Saturday Cowie russled me up a delicious lunch using goodies from Tentazioni and San Lorenzo. Both brilliant freebies!

The Tentazioni pasta was still slightly chewy which was great whilst the sun dried tomatoes from San Lorenzo added a bit of class to Lloyd Grossman’s tasty tomato and chilli sauce.

To make things a little bit more special Cowie even used my extra special tin of tuna.

What a great way take your mind off the awful rugby!

San Lorenzo Linguine and Amatricana Sauce

San Lorenzo’s hamper couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Deep into January and with funds tighter than a rope that circus performers walk along, trying not to fall 100 feet to their death, I could have kissed the nice people at San Lorenzo for their humanitarian food parcel.

Feeling tired and peckish the thought of some pasta with a bold red Italian sauce filled me with glee. And then I remembered that I had the remains of Mum’s roast ham in the fridge too that has found itself in all my cooking since she handed it over to me. A perfect way to pad out the Amatricana sauce which I have now found out is made from pig cheek! No wonder it tasted so good and that they wrote the ingredients in Italian!

I simply cooked the linguine as per the instructions with a pinch of salt in my boiling water and simmered the sauce in a pan before adding my cut up roast ham.

I used my new pasta claw to transfer the al dente pasta into the sauce and turned it over a few times before seasoning with pepper – it was already nicely salty from all the pig! A few parsley leaves gave the dish an Italian flag colouration and made me the happiest man in the world for the next 20 minutes!

Delicious. Doesn’t even compare to normal supermarket pasta / pasta sauces. The pasta was tasty in its own right with a robust texture and slippery finish. Not sticky. Not flabby. And the sauce was really quite special too. Deep, rich and very moreish.

Thank you San Lorenzo. I’m looking forward to trying out the rest of my goodies in due course. I recommend that if you like to cook proper Italian food at home and you haven’t got a good Italian deli near you then you visit San Lorenzo’s website instead. Photo to come once I get it off my phone.

Trusted Places San Lorenzo Prize!

Miraculously I won a prize! The lovely peope at Trusted Places thought I’d written some half decent reviews so they sent out the following announcement:

“Congratulations to the winners of our December competition! Angella, Amel, OnScotland, Browners and Cedric have already tucked into their San Lorenzo hampers. We’ll have a new competition soon so keep an eye on our blog.”

It’s absolutely brilliant to get a pat on the back for doing something you love doing anyway. I’m looking forward to giving all the amazing San Lorenzo goodies a whirl. Inside the big brown box are 2 bottles of very nice wine, a bottle of olive oil, various types of pasta, some sun dried tomatoes and lots of white polystyrene cheesy watsits! It couldn’t have come at a better moment as well. Right at the time that I’m having to stretch my pennies out as far as possible.

The box has been sat on the scanner next to my desk and everyone who has walked into my office has asked what it is. Great for word of mouth for San Lorenzo. It’s such a good idea to sponsor this informal competition. It’s all about clever new media ideas like these. I can feel myself becoming a San Lorenzo enthusiast already. I must have told about 20 people about it already!

I’ll write a little bit about each of the items in the box as and when I give them a try.