Pasta recipes

Sausage carbonara I have a lot of Jamie Oliver books, they make good reading, but haven’t actually cooked that many of his recipes, he’s all about using amazing (expensive) ingredients simply, when I’m often not. That said, you can’t really fault him, he does make beautiful food and on his Ministry of Food website, he’s some delicious […]

Mushroom and Walnut Pasta This dish evolved from hunger more than anything, adding things to the pan until it looked good, I like to fry mushrooms in a very hot pan but with no oil as they just slurp it all up. Be patient. Mushrooms tend to leak all their juices readily, but given time soak them back up […]

Another Crab Spaghetti This version is slightly different to the previous one as it has asian leanings, admittedly a bit strange with pasta, if you feel that weird about it, you could always have noodles… The point is, this is a perfect way to eat crab, with chilli, garlic, coriander and lime. Add to that that this was […]

Roasted Red Pepper Pesto Mmmmm, I can’t begin to describe how good this pesto is, I just had some leftovers for my lunch and its even better than yesterday. For some reason we ended up with 4 red peppers in the fridge, I decided to roast them as I’m a bit fussy about raw peppers, in that I’m not […]

Spaghetti Puttanesca Ah, the holy trinity of capers, olives and anchovies, they go so well together. You can’t really beat a puttanesca, I used fresh tomatoes in this recipe, but that’s mostly because we had lots. I think this is perfectly fine with chopped tomatoes. The intensity of flavour in the anchovy, capers and olives see to […]

Crab and Chilli Linguine I’ve been wanting to make this for ages, and last weekend we decided to indulge in a bit of yuppie food buying with the rest of the YPs on Lorsdship Lane…it was all local fishmongers and organic greengrocers. Anyway it was definitely worth it, this is absolutely delicious, some lemon, garlic and chili go really […]

Simple Tomato Sauce with Basil Oil This was another staring in the fridge moment, or rather my friend Rose was, we decided to make a fresh tomato sauce, I suggested a raw one but she didn’t agree. Anyway, with some lazy chopping we decided to try blending it and came up with lovely sauce. Some red pepper that needed to be […]

Broad Bean Pesto Mmm… more broad beans in my veg box and this is the perfect way to use them, as usual you can always substitute frozen broad beans. This is a lighter version of your classic pesto, I didn’t use pine nuts, but some toasted and sprinkled on top would be a welcome addition. I also had […]

Pasta with Spiced Chickpeas A somewhat unorthodox flavour combination of chickpeas spiced with cumin, cinnamon and turmeric, combined with tomato, flaked almonds, parsley and er… pasta, but it works all the same. Don’t skip any of the ingredients in this, they’re all pretty essential. This is based on a recipe from Accidental Vegetarian, a fabulous book by Simon Rimmer, […]

Pistou All the tastiest things (olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, parsley) blended into a paste and eaten with pasta. What could be tastier? This will keep for a few weeks in the fridge, if you cover it with a layer of oil. Ingredients 200g spaghetti grated rind and of 1 lemon and juice of ½ small bunch […]