Category: Pasta

Pastiera (savoury)

(savoury pasta egg bake)

First had this at a family party – and asked nicely for the recipe. Every other pastiera recipe I’ve seen is a sweet easter tart this is something quite different.

Roughly – pastiera is great for using up left over pasta (sauce or no sauce). Think Spanish frittata, but with pasta not potatoes in those eggs.

The mix – for a 500g of pasta (uncooked weight), use 12 eggs, 1 cup of grated parmesan and 2 cups milk. (salt & pepper to taste). Scale according to your leftovers.

Use cooked pasta. If it has a pasta sauce on it already – use it. Still good – might just need to wind back the salt and parmesan a spot. Spagetti looks the best, but really, any pasta, sauce or no sauce.

Mix the ingredients together and put in a non-stick 30-34cm diameter cake tin. Sprinkle of cheese on top? why not.

Cook at 140ºc for the first 15 minutes, then push up to 18ºc until set through and golden. over-cooking it makes it quite dry – the pasta keeps absorbing the liquid in you’re not watching it!

Pasta Bolognese

2 large onions, finely chopped
1.5kg minced beef
200g(-ish) cubetti or bacon
3 – 4 cans tomatoes
1 carton passata
1 bottle red wine
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 -2 bay leaves
2 tsp sugar
salt to taste (make it a spot saltier to compenate for the pasta, later)
1 tsp ground black pepper
herbs to taste (italian dried mix, fresh basil, margarum, whatever you like)

This makes a lot of sauce. I freeze it and take out lumps of it as I need it. great for a fast supper. Server on pasta of your choice, and slap on some parmasan

Fry the onions until they’re soft and translucent.

Add the cubetti/bacon, then the mince and cook off. Stir it well to make sure you don’t get big lumps of cooked meat in the pot.

Add the tomatoes & passata, wine, bay leaf, sugar and garlic. You can add salt at the end when you taste it. The bacon will add some salt so always taste.

Simmer for an hour or so (lid off) so that it condenses down to something dry enough. At this point – taste it, lots. add herbs and pepper, and if needed some extra salt.

Hook out the bay leaves, Serve or freeze…

Pasta Carbonara (egg free version)

Serves 3-4

quantities below can vary a little – depending what you’ve got. If you’re short of pancetta/bacon then you may need a pinch of salt to season.

Pancetta, diced (100g tub max)
Mascarpone cheese (1 small tub)
parmesan chesse (1/4 cup, grated)
Pecorino cheese (1/4 cup grated)
1/4 pt double cream
1 clove garlic
1 tbl course ground black pepper
Dash of dry white wine
pasta of your choice – fusilli or fettuccine work well.

Get the pasta cooking. However long that takes to cook is how long you have left to cook the sauce. 6 mins maybe? you need to be prepared and ready! Fry the pancetta in oil, add the crushed whole garlic clove to the pan to flavour it all towards the end. Don’t let the garlic brown, but make sure it infuses the pancetta and oil. add a good dash of wine to the pan to deglaze, and remove the garlic (bin it). Once reduced to a syrup, add the mascarpone and melt gently. Once fluid, add the double cream. you should add enough cream to make the sauce the right consistency. add the cheeses and black pepper and mix till melted but not boiling. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce.

The pasta will go in hot, so it will continue cooking for a few minutes – which means your sauce will go from perfect to thick and claggy really quickly. To combat this, you can either make the sauce a little runnier than you want it, or let the sauce cool for a couple of minutes before adding pasta, or (my favourite) retain a little of the starchy water when you drain the pasta, and add this back in to the sauce to loosen it off just before serving. (Remember a real carbonara uses eggs not cream/mascarpone, and uses the heat of the pasta to cook the eggs – so this is a workaround if you’re avoiding eggs)

Irish Pasta

It’s called Irish pasta because it has it has pasta (white) carrots (orange) and broccoli (green). OK, I suppose it’s actually a Pasta Premavera. 

A Premavera is made with crisp spring veg- like broccoli, carrots, mange tout- but the trick is the sauce. It’s a mix of melted parmesan cheese, juices and the starchy water from the pasta. It’s a very light sauce, and you have to mix it ‘as it happens’ in the pan with the pasta, cheese and sauce.  

 You can add a chicken breast if you like. I think this is one of my favourite pasta dishes a the mo. It feels quite healthy but, well, probably isn’t, with the cheese, butter and bacon hoofed in.

Deird and Poppy love this recipe too.

250g fuselli Pasta
2 carrots (medium)- cut into thin carrot strips
2 handfuls broccoli
4 slices smoked bacon
clove of garlic
glug dry sherry or white wine
1 mozzarella ball
large knob of butter
2x4cm parmesan cheese
toasted pine nuts
Boil pasta, in the last two minutes add broccoli and carrots. drain and butter.
dice and fry bacon and garlic, and deglaze with sherry/wine.
add bacon and parmesan to pasta, carrot & broccoli
stir till parmesan melts, and makes a light sauce (add back some pasta water if too dry)
chop the mozzarella and add it, along with the pine nuts, stir and serve

Pasta Salsa

The is a really quick pasta sauce that I discovered. A friend of mine makes a sauce for chicken like this- roasting the ingredients with the chicken in a hot oven. Anywho… frying it all up for a pan is quicker, and well, works a treat. It takes longer to cook the pasta than it does to prep and cook the sauce. the ingredients are a bit salsa-y, thus the name.

It works best if the cherry tomatoes are sweet and ripe. If they’re a bit sharp or hard, add a little extra sugar to compensate. You can make this with bigger tomatoes, but, well, it just ain’t the same. It also works quite well with a few olives thrown in for good measure.

Pasta- fuselli or similar
2 mugs cherry tomatoes
1/2 a chilli
1/2 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sugar
Pinch salt
Balsamic vinegar

Fry the chilli & garlic
Add 1/4-ed tomatoes + sugar
Put on lid & fry for 2 mins
Add vinegar
Fry & reduce (really hot heat, 2 mins tops)
Salt & black pepper to taste