Red lentil pasta and mushroom bologense

Ingredients: Red lentil pasta, mushrooms, onion, veg stock, tomato puree, salt, pepper, italian dried herbs, basil, italian hard cheese, garlic, red lentils

Preparation: chop and dice a couple of cloves of garlic and a medium onion and saute for around 5-7 mins until soft then set a side. Next add some olive oil to the pan and when hot, add around 3 tablespoons of tomato puree. Warning this will splatter when placed in the oil. Stir the puree around then add the garlic and onion mixture. Add a a little water to make sure the start of the sauce is not too dry.

Next add some chopped mushrooms to the sauce and add a little more water and a stock cube. Keep stirring and cook for around 10-15 minutes until you have your desired consistnecy. Add some italian dried herbs and some seasoning. You can add a handful of red lentils at this stage if you want a little more body and bite.

Serve with some red lentil pasta, fresh chopped basil and some grated italian hard cheese.

 

 

Pasta Ceasar Salad

Ingredients: pasta, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, Ceasar dressing, quorn chicken fillets, Italian hard cheese

Serves 2

Preparation

Cook 140 g of pasta for 2 and set a side to cool. Slice lots of lettuce and a good handful of quartered ripe cherry or plum tomatoes into a large mixing bowl. Drizzle some veg friendly ceasar dressing and a crack of black pepper. Add the cooled pasta twists and stir through. Avoid adding any extra dressing as you don’t want to swim in it.

Put pasta into large bowls and top with some griddled quorn fillets.

Finish the pasta salad with Italian hard cheese

Minestrone

Ingredients: Leek, carrot, courgette, canolenni beans, celery, plum tomatos, pasta

Serves 2

Preparation: saute 2 medium leeks for a few minutes in olive oil. Add some sliced carrots, courgette and celery and cooks for a further few minutes. Next add the plum tomatos and a handful of pasta. Continue to cook until the pasta is cooked through. You may need to add a little stock is the soup is too thick. Season with salt and pepper and with some herbs of your choice. 5 minutes before the end, add the drained tinned canolenni beans.

Serve with some crusty bread and a few shaving of italien hard cheese

 

Courgette and Italian hard cheese crisp

Ingredients: Courgette, Italian hard cheese

Serves 2

Preparation: Slice courgette and place on a greased baking tray. Next add a pinch of italian hard cheese on each courgette and give a little spray oil on top. Bake at around 180C Fan for around 12-15 minutes until the cheese has melted and about to turn golden and brown.

Hot Broccoli Pesto with Conchiglie pasta

Ingredients: Sprouting broccoli, chilli flakes, two garlic cloves, conchiglie pasta, mushroom ketchup, Vegetarian Italien hard cheese, lemon juice

Preparation:
Cook the pasta according to instructions.
While the pasta is cooking, heat a tablespoon of olive oil up in a large pan. Add a tablespoon of chilli flakes and two sliced garlic cloves and cook for a minute to infuse the oil. Add the sprouting broccoli to the pan and let it fry for a couple of minutes with a little mushroom ketchup (optional)
Next, add a small splash of water to break the frying and cover with a lid and cook for a further 8-10 minutes.

When the broccoli is cooked, remove them from the pan using tongs to a breadboard and roughly chop into small pieces.

Finally, combine the chopped broccoli to the cooked pasta and mix the grated cheese and squeeze of lemon

 

I forgot to take a photo of the finished dish, so here is one of my holiday photos of Italy instead.

Spaghetti Bolognese (with cauliflower bolognese)

Another tremendous fake meat dish with the cauliflower and red lentils doing some of the heavy lifting.

serves 2

Ingredients: a quarter of a small cauliflower broken into loose florets, a handful of red lentils, a tin of plum tomatoes, tomato puree, vegetable stock, fresh basil, Italian dried herbs, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, white pepper, spaghetti, onion, hard Italian cheese and garlic cloves

Preparation: Start by quickly blitzing the cauliflower in a blender for a short blast. After a few seconds, you will get ground cauliflower, and it will start to resemble ground mince. If you have any lumps, take them out and blend.

Next, fry and an onion and a few cloves of garlic for a few minutes. Next, add the tin plum tomatoes and then the cauliflower and a handful of red lentils. Add half a cup of boiling water and mix in the veg stock cube and tomato puree. Simmer for 10 minutes and stir to make sure the lentils don’t stick to the bottom.

Then cook the spaghetti as per the instructions. When the pasta is cooking, add the Italian herbs, a dash of lemon juice and touch of white wine vinegar. Add a pinch of white pepper and taste. The bolognese will be ready when the lentils are cooked through. Before serving, add some chopped basil and reserve some garnish the dish. Finally, grate some hard Italian cheese on top.

 

 

Lemon Linguine

Lemon and pasta go together like pasta and lemon.

2 servings

Ingredients: 1 large lemon, Linguine, 1/2 tbsp of olive oil, grated Italian hard cheese, fresh basil and rocket, salt and pepper

Preparation: Cook enough linguine for two and, when ready combine with the lemon sauce, basil and rocket.

For the sauce, add 1 tbsp of olive oil with a zest of the lemon, and it’s juice. Now grate around 50g of hard Italian cheese and stir together. The sauce will emulsify as the acid of the lemons act with the cheese. Add a pinch of salt and freshly grated pepper and taste. If the sauce is too sharp or dry, add a little more olive oil.

When ready, combine the sauce over the drained pasta then stir through a good handful of rocket leaves and a bunch of freshly cut basil.

Arrabiata version II

This recipe is another way to prepare a simple arrabiata pasta dish and is a follow up to this one. It is just as simple to make and also very cheap to pull together. This is way of making this dish is more of an american way of preparing a great Italian favourite.

Ingredients. Pasta(Fusilli is best), One box/tin of chopped tomatoes, 3/4 large pieces of finely chopped garlic, dried Italian herbs, fresh basil, chilli flakes

Preparation: Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet.
For the sauce, heat a large heavy bottom pan with olive oil. Use just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil is hot add the garlic and turn the heat down to create a garlic infused oil. After a couple of minutes add the tomatoes, Italian herbs and good pinch of dried chilli flakes, and continue to heat while the pasta is cooking. Near the end, cut a generous portion of basil into ribbons and stir into the sauce, reserve a few slices for later. Combine the pasta for two people together with the sauce and serve with the freshly grated Italian parmesan style cheese and the leftover basil.

Baked Gnocchi in tomato sauce

Baked Gnocchi with tomatoes is fast, stodgy and perfect for dark winter nights when you wish you were back in Calabria or Tuscany.

Ingredients:
500g of fresh gnocchi, a tin of tomatoes, a small onion, few cloves of garlic, mozzarella, basil, Italian puree, pinch of salt and white pepper as appropriate

Preparation:
Start off with making a basic Italian sauce. Dice and fry the onion with a few cloves of garlic. Combine with a tin of tomatoes and add a squeeze of tomato puree . Allow 10-15 minutes for the sauce to be ready and taste. Add the gnocchi to the pan and start to heat through. When hot, transfer the mixture to a small baking tray with some chunks of mozzarella and torn basil leaves then bake for around 10 minutes until the mozzarella is melted and golden. Serve with a green salad.

Roasted Gnocchi, Mushroom and Spinach

This recipe is a corker of an Italian winter dish which is super fast and easy to make. It will undoubtedly satisfy any cravings you have for stodge on cold dark days, but you won’t feel that guilty due to the amount of spinach added.

Ingredients: 500g of fresh Gnocchi, 150g bag of spinach, 250g of chestnut mushrooms and 75g of blue cheese, olive oil

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 200c for a fan assisted oven.
Slice all the mushrooms and place in a large roasting tin with the gnocchi and drizzle a small amount of olive oil on top. Toss the ingredients, so they coated.
Now roast for 30-35 minutes and make sure you occasionally stir to avoid the gnocchi from sticking.
Take of out the oven and place around 3/4 of the bag of spinach and stir through and crumble the blue cheese on top. Return the food to the oven for a few minutes until the blue cheese melts.
Finally, to serve, add in the remaining spinach and stir through and serve.