Hilary's Italian kitchen... or something like that

So, doing my imaginary cooking show today, narrating lunch to the invisible camera with lots of fun kitchen tips, it was my favourite English fry-up replacement:

take
two large slices of melanzane/aubergine/eggplant
two tomatoes (the lovely little Italian kind shaped like teardrops that are in the shops right now, and sooo sweet!)
buncha mushrooms
six slices of bacon or a packet of pancetta affumicato
two eggs
1 oz. butter

Chop the bacon into bits and cut the mushrooms into big thick pieces and the tomatoes in half lengthwise, saute the lot together over a medium heat in just a little of the butter for five minutes and push to the edge of the pan. Turn the flame down, and melt the rest of the butter, and lay down the two nice thick slices of melanzane (remember, butter burns at quite a low temperature, so keep the heat down).

Turn the m. after a few minutes and pile the mushrooms and bacon on top of the m. and make a little well in the middle. Crack an egg each into the well, so the yolk stays on top and the lovely eggy stuff oozes all through the bacon and onto the pan. Drop a few teaspoons of water into the pan and pop the lid on quickly. This will steam cook the egg very quickly. A teeny bit of balsamic vinegar in the steam water will add interest to the flavour.

Now your tomatoes should be nice and cooked but not squishy and you just ladle the whole thing onto a plate and eat. Nomma nomma!

I've been watching a lot of Jamie Oliver's cooking shows on Youtube lately and have fallen back into the habit of narrating all my cooking as though I'm doing my own YouTube cooking show. I grew up watching Graham Kerr and doing my own imaginary cooking show at home. My mum would often oblige by holding the imaginary camera and being the studio audience all at once. It was so much fun. And she always sat down and tried all my stuff. I suppose it was just a way of supervising me in the kitchen, but it always felt very supportive. Grandma also taught me cooking but she thought making an imaginary cooking show was silly (though she was also a Graham Kerr fan... who wasn't?).

I keep thinking that now with Youtube and cheap-o digital video cameras and whatnot, I could actually make this little dream hobby come true. Wouldn't it be fun to actually get together for (virtual) tea and triangle sandwiches? I'd have to do more housework, I guess. But maybe the camera wouldn't pick up much of the dust.

And we could take little trips together to the weekly farmer's market on Thursdays. I could show y'all around Santa Marinella, and maybe we could take little trips to the big daily market in Civitavecchia once in a while and y'all could meet the nice fishmonger and the garden centre lady.

We would need to come up with a good name for it. I'm really a terrible name-thinker-upper, so suggestions?



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