Sauce #67

Reflections from a chemical toilet

I was woken at around 8am on Sunday morning by a graceless shoulder barge from my daughter. Eye mask and ear plugs removed, I bit my tongue on the expletive it was about to unleash and asked what on earth she was doing waking me up so callously.

“I need the toilet,” she growled through gritted teeth, seemingly conscious of the fact that we were surrounded by strangers.

“Go with mum,” I managed, rolling over.

“She’s not here,” Nora hissed.

Along with beaches, picnics, Brad Pitt’s acting, Florence Welch’s singing, and Sudoku, camping is one of those things most people seem to go bananas for that I just can’t get my head around.

Oh, and festivals.

Last weekend found us doing at least two of those things, three if you count sitting on a picnic table eating, at one time or another, jerk chicken/daal and chips/endless pizzas/more chips/egg banjos/churros and so on as picnicking, four if you’d associate the caterwauling that came from the so-called Silent Disco at 2am as akin to Florence Welch’s singing. A grey area.

Rosie had twisted this grumpy bugger’s arm into going to a family-friendly festival all of 20 minutes from home and so there we were, or rather there I was, on the back of two nights of not much sleep, trying to squeeze in a few more minutes’ kip. Nora had other ideas and I wasn’t about to make her walk to the campsite’s chemical bogs on her own.

Fortunately I’d gone to bed fully clothed so was able to deliver her to the facilities in moments, and assess general conditions. Not too shabby, as it turned out. Like an infantryman who thinks he’s taken a bullet to the chest only to find it has struck his cigarette case.

My friend Bill and I had slunk back into the festival from our pitch around half eleven, keen to squeeze a few more drops of fun out of the evening, and had sat alone, outside the silent disco, putting the world to rights, feeling old. For a brief moment we thought a table of 20-somethings wanted to hang out with us, and felt cool and young, before they swiftly and full-stoppishly said “well have a good night guys” and evaporated. We called it a night. Damage limitation.

Turns out festivals are pretty bearable when you make enough bad decisions to make them fun and enough sensible decisions to make Sunday (and Monday, and indeed Tuesday) manageable.

Nevertheless, Sunday still called for a gentle recharge and some comfort food amidst the muddy unpacking of the car, the big wash, and the repacking of the car for what is something of a road trip around the south of the UK (and for which Rosie somehow persuaded me to pack the damn tent).

There was of course the Women’s Euro Finals to watch, too, at least for three of us. Nora the contrarian (and you can’t spell contrarian without Nora), having decided she supported the vanquished Sweden in the quarter finals, had refused to watch any further Lionesses games, and sat in her room for the duration of the match.

Rosie wanted buttery pasta, the general go-to for any dusty Sunday. I had been eschewing gluten for the past two months, to maddeningly positive results, but had made an exception for the weekend for ease of sustenance while festivalling. Pasta it was - heavy on the butter, heavy on the sausage (the full Gary Busey), heavy on the Jamie Oliver circa 2004 vibes. Back of the net.

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Baked Pache with Sausage Ragu

I always thought the honeycomb baked pasta schtick looked as if it would be mouth-shreddingly dry. Turns out if you fill each piece with a deeply buttery and generously garlicked sausage ragu the results are pretty splendid - crispy on top and meaty and delicious and tender in the middle.

You can find pache in M&S. Failing that rigatoni should do the job, otherwise sack off the honey monster and just do macaroni. Pache means ‘a pat on the back’, which you deserve.

We had this with a somewhat eccentric but pretty delicious (and fridge-clearing) dish of braised cavolo nero, tenderstem broccoli, shiitake mushrooms and stracciatella di burrata. Some toasted seeds would have tied it together quite well.