Simple pasta?

[Valiant]

So I'm currently fettling, and am started to get hungry, Lyn is ill so I suppose I should make something simple and hearty.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Arch]

What have you got?

We had a nice lunch yesterday - fry onion and peppers, cook pasta. Mix pasta, onion, peppers, olives and sundried tomatoes and pesto.

For me, pesto is the magic ingredient - I'll mix pretty much anything in with pesto and pasta!

[Gus]

diced tomatoes and a little basil or just add some pesto

Edit Arch was faster.

[Illegal Combat Ant]

Food of the gods. Ok, maybe peasants. Delicious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglio_e_olio

[Valiant]

I have onions, peppers, tomatos in every form, fresh basil, fresh coriander, polish sausauge, egg, chedder and sun dried tomatos. Oh and loads of garlic and ginger. No pesto sadly but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[peliroja]

I love pasta as simple as possible - cooked perfectly with a good olive oil, lightly-sauted garlic, salt and pepper. You can't beat it! ICA has it right (below).

Or, from your ingredients I'd take the skin off the tomatoes, chop finely, add garlic, salt and pepper, olive oil, and leave at room temperature for an hour or so, then stir into just-cooked pasta.  If you had some lumps of brie, I'd do the same but without the basil (sounds weird, but it's really delicious).

[citoyen]

Puttanesca is my favourite - tomatoes, garlic, chillies, anchovies, capers, black olives.

d.

[Arch]

I have onions, peppers, tomatos in every form, fresh basil, fresh coriander, polish sausauge, egg, chedder and sun dried tomatos.

I'd just bung them all in! 

Actually, from those, I'd go for the onions, peppers, basil and sausage, fried a bit and tossed into the pasta with olive oil. Maybe grate a little cheddar on top...

[Tim Hall]

Puttanesca is my favourite - tomatoes, garlic, chillies, anchovies, capers, black olives.

d.

This man speak da troof.

Try also: scraps of smoked salmon, fried gently until translucent, add mascarpone and stir.
Serve with pasta shapes of your choice, although tagliatelli seems to work best.
Bottle of Frascati.

Job's a good 'un.

(this recipe was originally posted Efrogwr OTP in the naff food thread. There's nowt naff about it.  The Frascati was my idea.*)


(* which reminds me of that joke posted in the terrible jokes thread about Postman Pat retiring)

[teethgrinder]

Simple Pasta is how I cook.

Boil loads of pasta for starters. I'll base this on 250g dry weight. I use 500g if I'm very hungry and that will near enough fill a 20cm saucepan. You might want to use less than 250g. I eat from a pasta serving bowl because plates don't hold enough and ICBA to keep refilling plates.

1 tin (180g, not the big tin) tuna. Drain the oil out of that.
No Pesto, so if you want it super simple, Paprika (lots of) and olive oil with the tuna. Mix it up so the pasta turns orangy with the paprika and job's a good 'un. Olives are nice to add if you have them and like them.

Or, 1 tin of tuna drained.
1 tin of tomatoes.
1 tube of tomato puree.
Mix all together and heat in mirowave then there's your pasta sauce.
Again, I like to add olives (I like olives)
Then add some olive oil.


That's pretty much the basis of most of my cooking, that and pesto sauce.

Very quick and easy to do and very filling. Carbs and protien.

Chicken might be nice instead of tuna fish, but I stockpile tins of tuna and there's no need to cook it, so less faffing. I like eating, not faffing with food.


If I can't eat it all in one go, I find that it keeps a day or two.

[Valiant]

Thanks all, so here's what I went with.

Dice 4 large onions and put in a pan with a couple of glugs of sunflower oil.
Add a teapoon each of cummin, chilli, and coriander powder.
Cook on a medium temp til the onions are clear.

Add in as much crushed ginger and garlic as you dare, I went with a 12cm piece of thick root ginger, and two whole garlics (I'm not talking cloves, I'm saying the whole thing).

Let that cook together for a bit, dice up a pepper, a couple of decent (Bengali) naga chillis and half a lemon. Add that in along with a tin of good quality italian chopped tomatos and a tin of water.

Slice up the sausage and add it in, cook on full heat for 15m and then simmer til the sauce thickens.

Grab 600g of pasta, stick it in a massive pan, add a few cloves of garlic, some salt and then cover in water and bring to the boil.

Turn the sauce off, add in some fresh coriander and a bit of salt.

When the pasta is done, drain, and put the pasta back in the saucepan on a medium heat, add in the sauce and mix it all together. After 2 minutes, turn the heat off and leave to stand for a few minutes while you go and set the table.


It's a lovely full on over the top assault of the senses. We've both been blocked up for a couple of days and are now feeling better and can actually breathe. There's enough to last us for lunch tomorrow


Sadly the wheel I fixed for Lyn has gone down again :*( Doh!

[Biggsy]

Tuna pasta: http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=808.msg1153914#msg1153914

We've both been blocked up for a couple of days

I wonder what prune pasta is like?

[LEE]

Some of the nicest meals I have ever eaten were in Italian country restaurants.

I've had Spaghetti with garlic oil and grated parmesan, just lovely.

As others have suggested, just chopped, peeled, tomatoes, garlic, chopped onion and olive oil.  That's all you need (but frying up some mixed seafood wouldn't hurt ......I'm thinking Seafood Linguine and my mouth is watering)

[Efrogwr]

The simplest one i know is spaghetti con olio ed aglio e prezzemolo (that's what the book called it).

Several cloves  of garlic warmed in olive oil (keep it cool enough to avoid the garllc browning, but warm enough for the flavour to infuse) and a lot of parsley.

E Minor has devised a couple more sauces based on marscarpone, cooked the same way as the salmon recipe that Tim Hall mentioned. For carnivores, smoked pancetta (preferred) or streaky bacon, again cooked just until the fat becomes translucent. Otherwise, small tomatoes (plum or cherry: for best results get really red ones (they taste better)) softened in oil. Then melt the marscarpone.

Recently I tried cooking small tomatoes with a pinch of chilli flakes, with great success. The trick is to cook them very slowly so that they are just starting to break down.

These pig meat and tomato recipes are go well with parmesan. The salmon doesn't need it.

I'm going to try Valiant's killer pasta!

Does anyone have a recipe  for a vegetarian ragu?

[pcolbeck]

Tars Spaghetti is a good one (pasta puttanesca).
Cant find my old recipie but this one nicked form the net looks the same

Ingredients (serves two hungry adults)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
3 anchovy fillets per person from a jar of anchovies in olive oil (use more or less to your taste.)
1 medium red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (use dried chilli flakes if you prefer)
8-10 pitted olives, quartered (I use green, as I prefer the taste but most recipes use black - it's up to you)
2 dessert spoons of capers (drained)
A good glug of olive oil
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Small handful of fresh basil
250g dried spaghetti

Method:
Gently heat the oil in a frying pan and add the garlic, chilli and anchovies.

Cook on a low-medium heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring to break up the anchovies (the anchovies melt away to almost nothing).

Add the olives, tinned tomatoes and capers and leave to gently simmer, stirring occasionally.

Whilst the sauce is simmering, cook the spaghetti in salted water according to the instructions on the packet, usually around 10 minutes.

Stir the chopped basil into the tomato sauce.  Drain the spaghetti and combine with the sauce.

Top with freshly grated parmesan.  Mature cheddar will do nicely if you don't have parmesan.  Et voila.