Spinach, pine nut and ricotta pasta shells
This is a good make-ahead dish – stuff the pasta and keep it covered in the fridge, separate from the prepared sauce, and finish assembling and cooking the dish near serving.
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 tsp crushed garlic 240-260g baby spinach leaves 200g ricotta
1 egg, lightly beaten
1⁄2 cup grated parmesan
12-20 large pasta shells, depending
on size
Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1⁄2 red onion, finely diced 400g can diced tomatoes
1⁄2 tsp salt
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar 1 tbsp brown sugar
1⁄2 cup water
1⁄4 cup pine nuts
Heat oil in a medium frying pan and saute´ onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add spinach, cover pan and cook 4-5 minutes until spinach is wilted and bright green. Take off heat and cool 10 minutes.
Drain off excess liquid then mix in ricotta, beaten egg and parmesan. Season well. Cook pasta shells to packet directions and fill each one with a generous amount of filling.
Sauce: Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer 8-10 minutes until thickened.
Spread sauce over the base of a oven dish and arrange pasta shells in the sauce. Sprinkle with pine nuts. Bake 20 minutes at 180C until golden.
Serves 6
Winter vegetable gratin
Everything for this dish can be done ahead, ready for a reheat and toasting of the topping before serving. Pop the lot on your table with the pasta and greens, and let guests dig in and help themselves.
12 yams
3 carrots
3-4 orange or golden kumara 1 red onion
1⁄2 cauliflower
6 cloves garlic
1⁄4 cup olive oil
1 tsp sea salt Topping
1 cup fresh or panko
breadcrumbs
1 tbsp fresh chopped rosemary 3 tbsps olive oil
1⁄2 cup grated parmesan
Heat oven to 180-200C. Halve yams if large. Peel carrots, halve lengthways then cut into quarters to make thick sticks. Peel kumara and cut into large bite-sized chunks. Peel onion and cut into wedges. Cut cauliflower into florets. Peel garlic, leaving cloves whole.
by Gregg Hurwitz (Michael Joseph) $37
It has only been a year, but this third instalment of Orphan X has seemed a long time coming.
X itself, followed by The Nowhere Man were such terrific thrillers (and, for once, thriller is the right word, rather than crime or mystery) that one could only hope Gregg Hurwitz could keep it up.
With Hellbent, he has managed it, although in such a way that his expertise as a writer and plotmaker has become even more apparent.
The story begins precisely where The Nowhere Man ended:
Place vegetables and garlic gloves in a large bowl with olive oil and sea salt and toss to coat. Spread out in a single layer in lined roasting trays and roast 20-30 minutes until tender and starting to colour.
Topping: Combine breadcrumbs, rosemary, olive oil and parmesan, mixing together to moisten crumbs.
Transfer vegetables to a serving dish and sprinkle crumbs over. Bake for 10-15 minutes until crumbs are golden and toasted.
Serves 6 with a phone call. It is from his old mentor, Jack – the man who took the young orphan, gave him the name Evan Smoak, and then made him into X, the most proficient in all ways of the undercover orphans.
This disturbing call is followed by another, this from Van Shriver, Evan’s nemesis, who has Jack helpless in a helicopter, threatening to throw him out unless Evan capitulates in every way. Needless to say, this does not happen, with Jack making his own way out of the helicopter, although dying in the midst of the mayhem he manages to create.
So we are then off on another fine adventure with the Nowhere Man. Initially this involves Evan deciphering a cleverly hidden message from Jack.
It leads him to a package hidden in a house in Oregon. The ‘‘package’’ turns out to be a 16-year-old girl, Joey, who is nearly as adept at every kind of fighting as Evan.
But – and this is where Hurwitz shows his skill – she is also enormously adept at computer hacking. She would even give The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander a run for her money.
Hurwitz has learned an enormous amount about what is possible with computers, and how they can be used both to find almost