I’m having a phase of eating plant based meals. Tonight I cooked a simple pasta dinner using a handful of ingredients I happened to have in stock. These included sun dried tomatoes and roasted red peppers (both from jars and neither ultra processed). I also used courgettes, onions, cherry tomatoes, almonds (good protein) and spaghetti….
Tag: Pasta
Chicken with sun dried tomatoes
I rustled up this dinner just before going on holiday as I had chicken thighs which needed using up. It’s a bit like Tuscan chicken which I make a lot but the sun dried tomatoes are really convenient because you can use the oil from the jar to fry the ingredients and it already includes…
Creamy chicken with vegetables, pasta and parmesan
I can’t seem to get enough of chicken at the moment. I usually make a version of this recipe as a tray bake – cooking chicken in the oven with masses of cherry tomatoes and adding creme fraiche for the last five minutes or so. But for this recipe I’ve pan fried the chicken (coated…
Authentic ragu recipe with tagliatelle
This recipe is a world away from the kind of ‘spag bol’ I used to make in my student days – a quickly cooked sauce using just minced beef as the meat base which always seem to end up very watery. A good ragu on the other hand is a rich sauce, full of flavour…
Creamy cauliflower tagliatelle
Here’s another recipe to celebrate Veganuary (although I should say I’m not doing the full vegan diet this month, just using this time as an incentive to cut down on meat). This recipe is from Miguel Barclay’s book Vegan One Pound Meals – part of his fantastic One Pound Meals cook book series which is…
Butternut squash lasagne
I love this recipe because it is so seasonal – the butternut squash was in my Oddbox recently and I already had most of the other ingredients in stock (including sage from my garden). I just needed to buy the ricotta and mozzarella. One of the pleasures of subscribing to Oddbox is that I start…
Creamy chicken and mushroom pappardelle
The inspiration for this recipe was the ingredients I just happened to have in my fridge. It’s a bit like the TV show ‘Ready, Steady Cook’ where contestants have to create a dish from four or five random ingredients. I used to love watching ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ when I was in between work contracts (a…
Smoked mackerel pasta
This is my version of a Nigella recipe (from her Nigellissma book) which in turn is based on a traditional Sicilian recipe – pasta con le sarde (pasta with sardines). I’ve eaten pasta con le sarde in Sicily, in a small village, in a traditional family run restaurant where it was the house speciality. The…
Pasta salad
This is a pasta salad I made just before the lockdown restrictions came into force – which seems like forever now, but it’s only actually about two weeks ago. At the time there was a wave of panic buying and I was having real trouble finding anything in the shops. Things have calmed down a…
Macaroni cheese
I made mac n cheese last night for a friend who came over to supper. He wanted to go over his pitch for a business idea – he’s made it to the semi finals of an entrepreneurial competition (very exciting) so it was a bit of a working dinner. He’s eaten my mac n cheese…
Pasta puttanesca
Pasta puttanesca, or prostitutes’ pasta (so named perhaps because it is so quick to make it left ladies of the night more time to earn their living) is one of my store cupboard standby recipes. I nearly always have the ingredients in stock and it’s also really handy to make on holiday. If I know…
Pretty herb pasta
I’ve started making my own pasta. I bought a pasta making machine for around £25 a few weeks’ ago and I love it. It’s a relaxing and therapeutic process and you can prepare pasta dough to keep in the fridge for a few days so you can make it in advance for when you are…
Cheap, fresh and easy 