Italian

Traffic Light Spaghetti

February 27, 2014

Three vegetables in red, amber and green make this kid friendly traffic light spaghetti supper.

It always amuses me how a whimsical name can turn a dish into child friendly feast.

I have called this traffic light pasta purely because it features a red, amber and green vegetable but the entertainment factor for Ted saying it was pasta with traffic lights was too much to resist.

You could use jarred sundried tomato paste although here I have liquidised the ones in oil together with some basil.

Toss into some cooked spaghetti.

Steam your spinach – preferably kid friendly little dinky leaves.

And roast some tomatoes and peppers. I used these colourful mini ones in a bag from Tesco.

Mix it all together and ta-dah, traffic light pasta.

Traffic light spaghetti

Serves 4

Ingredients
200g spaghetti
2 tbsp. Sundried tomato in oil
1 tbsp. Chopped basil (I used frozen)
12 plum tomatoes cut in half
80g spinach
250g (half bag) of mini peppers or 1 each yellow and orange peppers sliced roughly

Directions
1. Boil the spaghetti in a large saucepan according to pack instructions. Preheat the oven to 200c / gas 6.
2. Arrange the tomato halves and pepper slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil and roast lightly for 15 minutes.
3. Using a stick blender, briefly blitz the sundried tomatoes in oil with the basil and set aside.
4. Steam the spinach – I microwave mine in a plastic microwave saucepan.
5. When the pasta is cooked, stir in the sundries tomato and basil mix. Add in the roasted peppers and tomatoes and the cooked spinach. Toss the vegetables through and serve.

To add protein to this dish you could grate over some cheese or add some chunks of cooked ham.

I am entering this tomato ingrediented pasta dish into this month’s tomato themed Pasta Please organised by Jac Tinned Tomatoes and this month hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy – and also her event Extra Veg hosted alongside Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

It’s also definitely a Speedy Supper for my new event alongside Katie (hosting this month) for main meals ready in under 30 minutes.

Don’t forget also if you have a pud ready in similarly speedy time you can enter it into Dead Easy Desserts.

Leftover rocket pesto with stilton and walnut

February 14, 2014

Shortly after New Year, I stumbled across one of my all time favourite bargains ever. Half moons of blue stilton marked down to £1 when they’re originally been £8 each at full price.

I bought three, cut them into wedges, wrapped these in paper and put them in the freezer. Possibly freezing Stilton isn’t the best way to preserve its flavour but at this price I didn’t care. Probably I won’t need to buy any more blue cheese this year!

The price of everyday cheese as gone up by stealth. A couple of years ago, if you shopped around you could buy cheddar for £5 per kilo but today it’s nearer double that.

Worse still is the insidious size reduction of pre-packed products. Cheese, now commonly sold in 350g packs rather than 400g (and before that 440g and prior to that 500g!!) is not unique here. Everything from bottles of cola to bags of bagels has had pack sizes shaved down whilst prices remain static hoping the consumer won’t notice.

I regularly comment to my husband that it’s
a) my mental arithmetic
b) a knowledge how to cook from scratch
c) flexibility to bulk buy when items are genuinely on offer
… that keeps our shopping bills down.

If you weren’t so great at maths, not an experienced cook and on a very rigid budget it would be very different.

So I was delirious almost to find this blue Stilton priced at the equivalent of around £2 per kilo. Cheese hasn’t been that cheap this century probably.

My other thrifty habit recently has been to buy pairs of bags of rocket when they’re on offer (or indeed marked down miserable basil plants) and what doesn’t get eaten in salads or sandwiches gets whizzed up my own pesto before it turns floppy. Generally a small tub of home made pesto will stay in my fridge for up to a week and sometimes I freeze portions too.

Ways to use homemade pesto

Tossed with pasta
Spread it on toasted bread such as bruschetta or ciabatta
As a pizza sauce instead of tomato
Spread on tortilla wraps
Mixed into salad dressings
Mixed into cheese sauces
Stuff chicken breasts
Coat grilled fish fillets

Traditionally pesto would be made from basil, parmesan, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil however recently I have ringed the changes with the left over rocket leaves, used different oils, nuts and cheese. You can also make pesto mixes using roasted peppers, aubergines or sundried tomatoes rather than green leaves and herbs.

Hence this particular mix today:

Leftover rocket pesto with walnut and stilton

Half a bag of rocket
A handful of walnuts
Some chunks of blue Stilton
Olive oil
and of course garlic.

I’m not specifying exact quantities because these aren’t rigid. Simply blitz the lot in a handheld blender until you’re happy with the texture. Use it immediately or store in the fridge or freezer.

Do you ever make your own pesto?

I’m sharing this pesto with these events:

To Fiona hosting Elizabeth’s No Waste Food Challenge (using up rocket), Helen & Camilla’s Credit Crunch Munch (bargain cheese) this month hosted by My Golden Pear, and finally mine and Katie’s new Speedy Suppers event for 30 minute meals.

Cichette Venetian style appetisers with salami and chilli

August 1, 2013

Last month I visited Venice for my 40th birthday and one of the things I was eager to try was cichette style appetisers in a Venetian bar.

I will publish a Maison Cupcake post with the various Venetian dishes we tried but here is something I reproduced myself at home having been inspired during our trip.

Chargrill some red peppers – I am using my Le Creuset griddle pan which was also used in the courgette salad I published on Tumblr recently.

Now honestly, I did try to buy real polenta. But actually I could only get hold of a ready made block. Venetian white polenta would have been hard enough to find but I didn’t expect to struggle finding yellow polenta in a gigantic branch of Sainsbury’s. So ready made we have.

It slices up and carries tiger stripes extremely well and it tastes good too. Although admittedly you can’t soup it up with parmesan like you would if you made it from scratch.

To fire up my red chargrilled pepper I am using Fiery Chilli Sacla pesto which as you can see is one of numerous flavours – I have already instagrammed the wild garlic one in some stuffed mushrooms and there’s a tart post in the pipeline for Maison Cupcake using the classic basil.

This fiery chilli pesto packs a punch. I was rather taken aback how strong it was and it beefed up the Three Little Pigs salami beautifully.

To assemble the cichette simply stack polenta squares, pepper, a teaspoon of chilli pesto and a disc of salami and fix together with a cocktail stick. I could almost be in the backstreets of Fundamente Nove.

I had a trio of these cichette for lunch and when Ted saw the pictures he wanted them too. So my six year old had cichette for supper. Next he’ll be begging me to take him to Venice but that can wait.

Had you ever come across cichette?

With thanks to Three Little Pigs and Sacla for sample products.