Online cook-along with Karen and Nigel

Horn player Karen ran a fabulous online cook-along class with her husband Nigel. By the end of the evening we’d all tucked in to our delicious rigatoni dishes. Karen shares her recipe with us…

On Thursday 18 March, Nigel and I did an online cook-along on Zoom for the band. We worked a reasonable recipe where we thought everyone would have most of the ingredients.

We cooked bacon rigatoni with aubergine and feta cheese. The bacon can be substituted with more veggies for anyone who’s a vegetarian.

Ingredients for bacon rigatoni with aubergine and feta cheese

This recipe is for two people.

The ingredients you’ll need are:

• 1 aubergine
• 1 tin or carton of finely chopped tomatoes
• 200g rigatoni pasta or other pasta
• 1 small punnet of baby plum tomatoes
• 1 block of feta cheese
• 90g bacon lardons
• 1 clove of garlic
• A pinch of chilli flakes

Method for cooking the rigatoni dish

1. Chop up the aubergine into roughly 1cm cubes. Put two tablespoons of olive oil onto a baking tray and add the aubergine cubes. Cook on the middle shelf of the over for approximately 30 minutes on gas mark 6.
2. Start boiling water for the pasta – season the water with a pinch of salt. Cook the pasta for 10-12 minutes or as directed on the packet.
3. While the pasta is cooking, add two tablespoons of olive oil to another saucepan and when hot, add the garlic and cook for a minute on a medium heat. Then add the bacon lardons and cook for a few minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and a pinch of chilli flakes and stir everything together. Leave to simmer.
4. When the pasta is cooked, drain it. Drizzle with olive oil and leave to rest in the saucepan.
5. Take the aubergine out of the oven after 30 minutes. Add the aubergine to the saucepan with the bacon and chopped tomatoes and continue to simmer.
6. Chop the feta cheese into 1cm cubes and chop a handful of plum tomatoes in halves. Add to the same baking tray the aubergine was on. Cook on the middle shelf of the oven for 10 minutes on gas mark 6.
7. Add the pasta to the saucepan of garlic, bacon and chopped tomatoes, and mix together. Serve up.
8. Take the feta cheese and plum tomatoes out of the oven and add to the dish.

We could drink as much as we liked!

Of course we had to have wine to cook with, too! Nigel did the cooking while I advised the step by step instructions.
All went really well and it took about 40 minutes in all to cook.

Then we sat down to eat our dinner together. It was really sociable and we were able to eat and drink as much as required, as no one was driving home. The best bit was we didn’t have a bill to fight over at the end!

Thanks guys for allowing us to do this with you all, we are happy to oblige another cook along when desired.
From chefs Nigel and Karen

Our online cook-along was such a success that we’re doing it again soon!

Take a look at other activities we’ve been doing over the last year in our band’s positive moments of 2020 blog.