pasta

Buttery tomato pasta sauce

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image

I didn’t make this, Bert’s dad did. Me and Bert created masterpieces from dinosaur stickers while alarming and intriguing phases like ‘it’s taken a whole pat of butter!!’ floated through from the kitchen. I imagine he’s setting up a rival blog as we speak.

It’s a much softer, mellower tomato sauce than the usual. It was delicious.

Enough sauce to serve 6-8 people

2 tins of plum tomatoes and their juice

5 TABLESPOONS OF BUTTER!!!

1 onion, peeled and halved

Pinch of salt

A few torn basil leaves and grated Parmesan to serve

The tomatoes, butter and onion go in a saucepan with a little salt. Bring to a simmer and stir now and then to break up the tomatoes. Cook gently for 45 minutes – the sauce should be reduced and the tomatoes a thick pulp. Remove the onion.

Stir enough through cooked pasta to coat it thickly but not drown it. Top with a few torn basil leaves and a sprinkling of Parmesan.

Bert took a mouthful then stared dreamily into space. I asked him what he was thinking about – green, roaring dinosaurs of course!

 

Tomatoey meatballs

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meatballs

Three things I never thought I’d do as a parent:

  1. Watch hours of Peppa Pig with my eyes closed and my cheek resting on his shoulder, pretending to be awake and merely affectionate
  2. Lie about the presence of chocolate buttons in the house
  3. Buy shoes that light up when he runs

Serves 4

For the meatballs

500g mince – a mixture of beef and pork is ideal; if not, just beef

6 tablespoons breadcrumbs

1 egg

2 tablespoons grated parmesan or pecorino

2 tablespoons passata

3 cloves garlic, crushed

A few sprigs of basil, leaves finely chopped, or two teaspoons of dried basil

Salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

500g pack of passata, less the two tablespoons you’ve already used

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 desertspoon balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

To serve

Chopped basil

Grated parmesan or pecorino

Spaghetti

Mush all the meatball ingredients together in a bowl with your hands; ideally, with latex gloves on so you feel like a lab technician. Form into walnut sized ball – if you’ve still got your CSI gloves on this is easier. Brown the top and bottom of the meatballs for a couple of minutes in a wide, deep frying pan in a splash of olive oil, then add the sauce ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes. I did it right to the point of starting simmering, then finished it off when The Toddler was back in residence. Put the spaghetti on to cook when it’s been simmering for 20 minutes or so.

When it’s done, carefully remove the meatballs, pour the sauce into the cooked spaghetti,  mix thoroughly to coat and stir through the chopped basil. Serve the tomatoey spaghetti with meatballs on top, and add cheese at the table. Stirring through the sauce first is a Mr Me and Bert trick.

The recipe was from mylittlelunchbox.com, though I amended it a bit. I make double of the meatballs, freeze them and they make a good, harried-from-work, quick dinner, cooked from frozen with oven chips and peas on the side.

Crab chowder pasta

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Bert demolished this. I was obviously more restrained.

Serves 2-2.5

1 garlic clove, crushed

A little olive oil

100ml sour cream

Pinch of saffron

Good pinch of paprika

200g sweetcorn

100g crab meat

Handful grated parmesan and more to serve

Salt and pepper

Pasta to your appetite

Put your pasta on to boil.

Fry the crushed garlic very briefly in the oil till it’s soft but not coloured, then add the cream, paprika and saffron, cooking very very gently so the saffron can infuse the cream. When the pasta’s cooked, stir the sweetcorn, crab, cheese and seasoning through the cream and stir it all through the hot pasta.

Sprinkle more parmesan on at the table.

Bert: [blowing dramatically on pasta] ‘Hot, hot, hot!’

Me: ‘Is it hot?’

Bert: [extremely patiently] ‘No, not hot.’

Okay…

 

Our carbonara

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nyt carbonara

Actually, this isn’t our carbonara, it’s the New York Times’.

Serves 3-4

200g pancetta pieces or bacon lardons

Splash olive oil

2 eggs, 2 egg yolks (make a meringue or throw them away, according to your temperament and mood)

1/2 cup of grated pecorino, 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Good grating of black pepper and good grating of nutmeg (the nutmeg is my sole contribution to the recipe). (You can swap the nutmeg for a couple of handfuls of peas, added to the cooking pasta in the last minute or two of cooking time, and some shredded fresh mint, added to the egg and cheese combo.)

Pasta to your appetite

Fry the pancetta in olive oil in a hot pan till just starting to crisp and brown. Meanwhile put the pasta on to cook and boil the kettle again. Fill a large bowl with boiling water and set aside.

Mix together the eggs, cheese and seasoning. At this point I had the dog begging for scraps and a very small person standing next to me saying ‘thcheesthe’ very insistently. Reader, I gave them both cheese.

Then add the cooked pasta to the pan with the pancetta and continue to cook it on a gentle heat for a minute or two.

Empty the bowl of water and immediately add the pasta and bacon and the cheese and egg mixture to the hot bowl. Stir to combine.

Serve with more grated parmesan. Bert had his with fresh strawberries (intended for pudding, but he insisted) and I had mine with a green salad.

 

 

 

 

Sunny pasta

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Roast yellow veg carbonara. Blurred but cute picture.

sunny

Served 2.5 (me and Bert and leftovers for my lunch tomorrow)

Half a butternut squash, deseeded, sliced into slim discs

Yellow pepper, deseeded, sliced into discs

Splash of olive oil or rapeseed oil

One clove of garlic, crushed

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

60ml double cream

Pecorino cheese, grated – about half a cup – around 60g or so – and a little more to serve

Pasta

Half a ladle full of saved pasta water

Drizzle the veg with oil and roast for about half an hour in a hot oven – 220 or so. (I did it on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven.)

At this point in the proceedings I watched two Peppa Pigs with Bert on my knee, surrepticiously sniffing his hair.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta, keeping about half a ladle of the cooking water to one side. Mix together the cream, egg and cheese and season with salt and pepper. In a large pan, fry the garlic briefly in a little oil, stir in the veg then take the pan off the heat and stir through the pasta the second it’s drained, followed by the cream mixture and a little bit of the pasta cooking water. Coat the pasta with the sauce and serve with a bit more grated cheese.

Bert hasn’t eaten for over 24 hours because of a virus (Ray’s done well out of it), but he ate this.

 

Alphabetti Spaghetti

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alphabetti

I had seconds of this. And Bert’s leftovers.

I hope that this is in the same category as home made baked beans – wholesome and tasty, and not in the same category as home made custard creams – insane. I have made my own custard creams, but that was in a pre-child fit of whimsy.

Serves four, or two for lunch and leftovers for lunch tomorrow

200ml passata

50ml water and a bit of pasta water

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon brown sugar

2 carrots, grated

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

A lot of olive oil

A couple of handfuls of alphabet pasta

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil then add the carrots. You want enough oil for the carrots to be melting into it after a few minutes. Cook for around five minutes, till the carrots really soft, then add the passata and 50ml of water. Season to taste with salt and add the sugar. Cook for around five minutes again. Meanwhile put the alphabet pasta on to cook (mine takes 7 minutes).

Then puree the sauce, add maybe half a ladle full of the water the pasta was cooked in – enough to get it to a thick but runny consistency – and serve on hot, buttered toast.

Creamy tomato and marscapone pasta

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IMG_0525

Got laryngitis from shouting ‘didDA’ too much? What you need is a soothing, creamy, tomato pasta sauce.

Serves 1.5-2.5

1 shallot (I used the white of a massive spring onion), chopped

Glug olive oil

1 large tomato, chopped

300ml passata

100g marscapone

1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Fry the onion gently in olive oil till translucent, then add the chopped tomato, salt, sugar and passata and cook for around 10 minutes (while your pasta’s cooking). Stir in the marscapone and serve with a pasta like fussili, which will hold onto the sauce and can be grabbed easily by a chubby hand.

Watch as your baby eats half and throws the other half on the floor, piece by piece, while fixing you with a cold, unblinking Sopranos stare.

Fishfingers and ketchup

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fishfinger

Serves 1.5

For the fish:

1 large piece of skinless and boneless cod (it was about 280g)

1 slice of bread, blitzed into breadcrumbs

2 good pinches of cayenne pepper

Glug olive oil

Flour for dusting – cornflour works well

Milk

For the chips:

2-3 medium sized potatoes

Sunflower oil

For the ketchup:

1 tomato, diced

200ml passata

1 small clove garlic, crushed

Glug olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Black pepper

To make the ketchup, fry the garlic briefly in olive oil, then add the tomatoes, passata, herbs and seasoning. Cook for around 10 minutes, mashing the diced tomatoes into the sauce as you go. This makes enough to use on one day as a simple tomato pasta sauce, with leftovers for ketchup (or a dipping sauce for fish cakes or sweetcorn pancakes). It would keep in the fridge for around 3 days, I’d say.

Cut the potatoes into chunky chips (about 1.5 cm square at the end), put in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and parboil for 5 minutes. Drain, give them a couple of minutes to dry off and coat them in sunflower oil, cooking on a lined baking sheet in a hot oven (220 degrees) for about 25-30 minutes. Turn them over half way through.

Combine the breadcrumbs with the cayenne pepper, get a glug of olive oil hot in a pan, and brown them till they’re crispy. The cayenne gives a bit of a kick and a touch of that Captain Birdseye orange hue. Cut the fish into thick fingers and dip in flour, then milk and then in the crumbs. They join the chips in the oven for the last 15 minutes.

Cheesey greens pasta

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cheeseygreens

Serves 1.5

Enough pasta for 1.5 – we had about 140g

1 dessert spoon plain flour

1 dessert spoon butter

250ml whole milk

100g parmesan, grated

Handful fresh mint, finely chopped

Black pepper

Mixture of greens  – we had half a head of broccoli, a handful of baby spinach and a few leaves of bok choi

100g cubed pancetta, fried in olive oil till crisp (optional)

Put the pasta on to boil, adding the florets of broccoli when there’s around 7 minutes to go and the finely chopped leafy greens with just one or two minutes to go. Shred them both ways, as long strands will be treated with disdain.

Melt the butter and stir in the flour, then gradually add the milk till you have a thick white sauce. Stir in the mint, cheese and black pepper.

Combine the sauce and pasta, adding the pancetta for any die-hard meat eaters. Salt yours, particularly if you’re not adding salty pancetta.

There’s a rumour going round that babies love over-cooked broccoli. Not this one. I ate all ours, but the green and cheesey sauce was eaten with relish.

Mac ‘n’ squash

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macaroni

I remember macaroni cheese always tasting too strong when I was little. This is a bit lighter.

Serves 2.5

1/2 small butternut squash

good glug olive oil

1 tsp dried sage or a few finely chopped sage leaves

4 or 5 handfuls of tubey pasta – it was about 175g

1 dessert spoon butter

1 dessert spoon flour

1/4 litre of whole milk

Grated nutmeg, pepper

A large handful grated strong cheddar

A small handful grated parmesan

1 thick slice of bread – I used sourdough because that’s what we had and because I’m insufferably middle class.

Another dash of olive oil

Peel, seed and chop the squash. Drizzle it with olive oil – actually, I rained on it rather heavily. Sprinkle on the herbs. For some reason, even though I don’t recall ever cooking with dried herbs, we have a full set in the cupboard. I think a single Jamie Oliver recipe called for the lot. Frugal. Anyway, they’re proving to be quite good for cooking for babies – a bit stronger, so helpful with the low salt thing, and very fine, so no strands for a baby to pull out of their mouth in disgust.

Roast the squash in a hot oven for about 20 – 25 minutes depending on how small you cut it. Check now and then. You want it soft and browned but not crisp. It needs to be soft enough to collapse into the cheese sauce almost completely.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the packet instructions – 10 minutes or so.

Melt the butter and beat in the flour – take it off the heat, stirring, so it can cook for a little while. Then add the milk. A tiny bit at first – the whole thing will seize up – then more and more, stirring a lot. Season with pepper and grated nutmeg. When it’s thickened add the cheese and take off the heat. Add a ladleful of the hot pasta water.

Reduce your bread, crusts and all, to crumbs. I use our new Nutribullet. Everything’s getting Nutribulleted these days. The dog’s lucky not to get a smoothie for dinner. Now heat up a glug of olive oil in a frying pan and, I would say toast but I think the honest word is fry, the breadcrumbs.

This sounds like a pain to cook but it’s really not. I put the squash in to roast, took a ten minute cuddle break with Bert, and then did the rest in fifteen minutes. For some of that time I was holding him while he peered at what I was doing one handed.

Crush the roasted butternut squash with a fork and combine with the pasta and sauce. Sprinkle over the breadcrumbs. Put the whole thing in the oven at 180 degrees for about ten minutes.