Slimming World Linguine with Crab and Chilli

This dish reminds me of something I would order in an Italian restaurant or better still, eat while on holiday somewhere sunny, ideally with a view of the ocean. It's actually based on a Slimming World recipe for the rather more prosaically named 'crab noodles' and is really quick to throw together.

Cook some linguine or spaghetti according to pack instructions; when is cooked, drain, and add some tinned crab (a small tin will do 1-2 people depending on how generous you want to be with the crab), a few dried red chilli flakes or a pinch of fresh chopped red chilli, some finely chopped red onion, a squeeze of lime juice, and the grated zest of the lime, and some fresh parsley on top. Serve with broccoli or a salad on the side. Delicious!

Healthy Spaghetti Carbonara with Spiralized Vegetables

Spaghetti carbonara is an easy go-to dish if I want to make something midweek that's fast and doesn't involve a lot of meat, as I don't think it's good to have a big portion of red meat every day. Since I'm doing Sugar Free September I was trying to think of ideas. Simple (as opposed to complex) carbs are off the menu at the moment, as when your body breaks down pasta or potatoes it converts the starch to glucose. So doing Sugar Free September means no potatoes or pasta, though I have recently discovered gluten-free pasta which your body doesn't convert to glucose in the same way.

My fall-back when I haven't been eating pasta is spiralized vegetables, and I realised I'd never actually made a simple spaghetti carbonara using spiralized vegetables.

 

I decided to use spiralized butternut squash and courgette though you can experiment with any different veg that you like. Chop some bacon and fry in a large pan then add the spiralized veg with a little water and cook for a few minutes until the veg has softened and the water has largely evaporated.

Add either single cream, plain yogurt or even crème fraiche combined with a beaten egg and stir into the pan.

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese to serve.

Courgetti (Zucchini Noodles) with Tomato and Red Pepper Sauce

This year’s trendy kitchen gadget is the spiralizer, which turns vegetables (and fruit) into spaghetti-like strands. I’ve already used it to make these sweet potato waffles which were much tastier than I expected, and really healthy. I hadn’t successfully made ‘spaghetti’ out of it yet – I did spiralize a carrot, and bring the strands to the boil, at which point they turned to complete mush. Lesson learnt!

This time I had a courgette (zucchini) in the fridge left over from making vegetable kebabs for a barbecue and remembered that courgetti was one of the first recipes I came across for the spiralizer – courgette spaghetti. You can serve it with whatever you like; I also had some tomatoes and red pepper left in the fridge from the barbecue and found this recipe from Hemsley and Hemsley, two sisters who have a healthy eating website and recipe book.

They recommend eating the courgette raw but I didn’t really fancy that as I don’t even eat courgette at all normally, so I decided to fry it in a little butter. Be aware you don’t get a huge amount of ‘spaghetti’ from one courgette; it was enough for a small portion (it was pretty late when I got home from work that night and I didn’t want a big dinner at 9pm) but otherwise I would say this amount is more of a starter, side dish or small meal. For two people, I would do three courgettes.

I changed their recipe a bit:

To serve one, you need:

Spiralizer machine

1 large courgette, trimmed flat at each end

Half a red pepper

2 tomatoes

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp of oil for the pan plus 1 tbsp for the sauce

Clove of garlic

Handful of fresh basil

Handful of cashews or peanuts (I couldn’t find cashews in the cupboard and at 9pm wasn’t going to keep looking, so used unsalted peanuts!)

NB: Ideally you need to make the sauce, or at least the red pepper and tomato part, the day (or several hours) before.

Preheat oven to 165C.

Line a baking tray with foil and spread around 1 tbsp oil. Cut the tomatoes in half and the red pepper into chunks and place face down in the pan. Roast for about an hour; I had my oven at too high a temperature so the skins on the tomatoes burnt, but they were very easy to remove. After an hour, add the garlic to the tray and roast for another half an hour.

  

Remove the charred skins from the tomatoes and pepper and squeeze the garlic out of its skin, either into a small bowl or straight into a food processor. I did this part the night before so kept the ingredients in a bowl in the fridge.

In your food processor blend the tomato, pepper, garlic, vinegar and rest of the oil, plus the basil leaves, nuts and salt and pepper.

To make the courgetti, place the courgette in the spiralizer and turn the handle until you have what looks like spaghetti. You can eat this raw, according to the Hemsley and Hemsley recipe, but I preferred to warm it through in a frying pan in a little butter. Top with the tomato and red pepper sauce.

For someone who has honestly never willingly eaten courgette, I was very surprised at how nice this tasted! I think it will take a bit of getting used to- courgette that is, not spiralizing –but I would definitely class this recipe as a success.

Courgette is known in the US as zucchini but the name courgetti definitely sounds better for this dish! But since it does also begin with Z, and that is the letter I have chosen this month for Alphabakes (which I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker) I am sending it in.

I'm also sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Jen's Food, on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy.

Cheese-stuffed meatballs

These cheese-stuffed meatballs are really simple and tasty and are a good way of jazzing up spaghetti bolognese if it's a dish you make a lot or you have someone who isn't that keen on pasta (strangely enough there are people like that out there!). Somehow the idea of a cheese-stuffed meatball is so much better than spaghetti bolognese even though there's not all that much difference!

I made these to use up some freshly minced beef I made after buying chuck steak from the local butcher and trying out my Kitchenaid mincer attachment. You can mix the mince with whatever you like such as finely diced onion, garlic, oregano and other herbs and a little salt. Then cut cubes of hard cheese - I've used cheddar here, but you could also try halloumi. Form the mince into a ball around the cheese.

Roll into balls and place in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up.

When ready to cook, heat a frying pan and spray with Fry Light or a little oil and fry the meatballs on all sides until browned.

In the meantime cook some spaghetti according to the packet instructions. You can also make a tomato sauce from scratch if you have time, but here I just used passata as I didn't want to compete too much with the flavour of the meatballs.

As you can see, when you cut into the meatballs, the cheese is softened but still intact; it hasn't oozed out or melted into the meat. These went down very well with my boyfriend!

In fact because I made these for my boyfriend as I knew he would love it (more than spag bol) and because I love him (awww)  I'm sending this to Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, which has a theme this month of cheesy romance.

I'm also sending this to Pasta Please, as the challenge this month focuses on spaghetti and these meatballs go perfectly with spaghetti. The challenge is hosted this month by a blogger I haven't come across before, called Feeding Boys and a Firefighter, on behalf of Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

Pasta Puttanesca

Before I got rid of this frankly baffling cookery book I decided to make one more thing of it and realised I had never eaten pasta puttanesca. The name translate as slut's or whore's spaghetti though there is some debate as to why the dish has that name - some say it's a reference to the sauce being hot and spicy, others say it was a quick cheap meal that prostitutes could prepare between customers. The ingredients are fairly basic and would have been cheap and readily available: tomatoes, olive oil, olives, capers and garlic, and the recipe I used also had anchovies.

I got rid of the book before I wrote the recipe down but it is fairly simple. Heat a tin of tomatoes and add chopped olives, anchovies, capers, garlic and season.

Serve with pasta. Simples!

This is a very easy and fast recipe to make, so I am sharing it with Tinned Tomatoes' Pasta Please. The challenge is hosted this month by Elizabeth of Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary and her challenge is to make something with pasta that is less than half an hour from packet to plate.

My almost-first cookbook and spaghetti bolognese

What was your first cookery book? Can you remember? Have you still got it?

Those were the questions posed by Foodie Quine on her blog; I thought if I could find my first cookery book I would also make something from it.

I don't think I had any cookery books growing up but I loved my mum's main cookery book that all her cakes seemed to come from; some pages were coming loose as she had had it for a long time. I can't remember what that book was called or if she still has it, perhaps she will be able to remember?

I didn't really cook at all even when I left school and went off to Germany to be an au pair; I started collecting recipes then, but I wrote them down in a little notebook, which my au pair 'mum' Gila bought me in a local bookshop, and which I have still got today. I guess in that sense, this is my first ever cookbook:

The first recipe in it is a pasta bake. The entire recipe runs: "Melt grated cheese in 3 tbsp. marg and flour, half litre milk. Cook and drain pasta. Grease oven-proof dish. Fill with pasta, pour sauce over top. Cover top with breadcrumbs and dot with flakes of butter. Can also add ham. Bake for 30 mins at 200C." I actually remember making this for the children I looked after - they liked it (which is why their mum told me how to make it) but I think it must have tasted very bland, especially without the optional ham!

I'd completely forgotten until just now that my first 'real' cookery book was given to me as a gift by Gila when I left her employment at the end of my gap year to start university (I was going to study German so had deferred my place for a year to spend some time in Germany first). The book is called "Artusi" and is a book of Italian recipes, but as it is entirely in German I am ashamed to admit that I have never actually used it. It got put to one side when I went off to university (I lived in catered halls and didn't really cook for a few years) and then was at the bottom of my cookery book pile for a long time. It's only now that my cookery books have a nice new home - my boyfriend built me a bookcase just for cookery books while I was away on holiday, how amazing is he?! - that I saw it again and realised with shame that I had never used it.

I assumed it was a random German book and just looked it up and am even more horrified that I've never used this book - according to Amazon,

"First published in 1891, Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangier bene has come to be recognized as the most significant Italian cookbook of modern times. It was reprinted thirteen times and had sold more than 52,000 copies in the years before Artusi's death in 1910, with the number of recipes growing from 475 to 790. And while this figure has not changed, the book has consistently remained in print. Although Artusi was himself of the upper classes and it was doubtful he had ever touched a kitchen utensil or lit a fire under a pot, he wrote the book not for professional chefs, as was the nineteenth-century custom, but for middle-class family cooks: housewives and their domestic helpers. His tone is that of a friendly advisor - humorous and nonchalant. He indulges in witty anecdotes about many of the recipes, describing his experiences and the historical relevance of particular dishes. Artusi's masterpiece is not merely a popular cookbook; it is a landmark work in Italian culture."

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 I never realised Gila had given me such a significant cookery book - so I pledge here and now to use the book very soon! It may take a while - and a dictionary- to figure out some of the recipes as I haven't spoken German for a while but the book can no longer sit neglected on my shelf. I'd be interested to know if any of my readers have come across this book before?

So, when I started planning this blog post I hadn't actually spotted Artusi so made something from a different cookery book. I had a student cookery book towards the end of my time at university, which for at least a year was my only recipe book. I can't remember the exact name or who wrote it, but it had very simple recipes. One thing I remember making, that I particularly enjoyed, involved pouring a can of cream of chicken soup over a chicken leg and cooking it in the oven - I think that was it! After I left university I decided I didn't need the book any more so no longer have it in my collection.

This book, "Cookshelf Italian", is the first cookery book I think I actually bought and my first 'proper' i.e. non-student, in English (!) cookery book that I actually remember using and cooking decent meals from. I bought it in Woolworths - which shows how old it must be! - I think towards the end of my undergraduate degree. In fact the date inside the front cover is 2000 which sounds about right - I would have been 21 at the time.

There are a few recipes that I remember making a lot from this book; one is the original version of the recipe that developed into this and the other is spaghetti Bolognese. Now I make spag bol in different ways depending on the ingredients and time available, but when I learnt how to make it, it was from this recipe. So I thought I'd make it again and share the recipe with you all.

You need:
serves 4
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped (though I left it out this time)
1 stick celery, chopped (I also left this out)
50g cubed pancetta
350g minced beef
400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
125ml red wine
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt and pepper
350g dried spaghetti

Heat oil and fry the onion and garlic then add the carrot and celery if using.

Add the pancetta to the pan and fry until browned

Then add the mince and fry until browned.

Add the tin of tomatoes, puree, herbs and red wine and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for 30-45 minutes until most of the liquid has gone. Season to taste. Meanwhile cook the spaghetti.

Serve on a bed of spaghetti.


I am sending this to My First Cookbook hosted by Foodie Quine.
I'm also sending it to Pasta Please as the theme this month is long pasta like spaghetti. The challenge is hosted by Green Gourmet Giraffe this month on behalf of Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.

Pasta Pomadoro with Meatballs

Out of curiosity I bought a cookery book called How to Feed a Man With Love - it's very different to the other books I've got and I feel deserves an entire blog post in itself, so watch this space for a review. In the meantime though I wanted to post this recipe I made from the book - at least, the recipe for the sauce is from this book, the meatball recipe is an old one I already knew.

Pasta Pomadoro (pasta with tomato sauce)

You need:

1 clove garlic

1 carton passata (crushed tomatoes)

squeeze of tomato puree

olive oil

2 tsp sugar

fresh basil

salt, pepper

Crush the garlic and fry in olive oil

Add the passata to the pan and stir in the sugar, tomato puree and season.

Add the fresh basil and allow the sauce to simmer

To make the meatballs, you need:
minced beef
parmesan cheese
dried oregano
half an onion, finely chopped

Mix the parmesan, oregano and onion in a bowl

Add the mince and mix well

Roll into balls then fry until browned

Serve with the tomato sauce and spaghetti

Fresh Homemade Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce (using KitchenAid pasta attachment)

My boyfriend bought me a KitchenAid last year (in pink! I was over the moon) and this year (as per my suggestion) bought me the pasta attachment for it. I just used it for the first time and was almost bouncing round the kitchen with delight. It rolls the pasta so thin! Then it slices it into spaghetti strands! Which is kind of obvious but when you see it happening for the first time it's really cool. The KitchenAid does all the hard work for you and turns out perfectly and it's actually really fun to watch it all happen. I can see lots of pasta in our future.

First you need to make your pasta dough. I didn't realise there was a recipe leaflet included with the KitchenAid spaghetti attachment so I searched for a recipe online. I used this recipe from All Recipes, though I have since seen other recipes that use different quantities of the ingredients. Also, I was a bit worried that I couldn't get hold of 00 flour, which is usually used in making pasta; it's on my list for my next big shop but in the meantime I had to use plain. But the recipe I used didn't specify 00 flour anyway so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

To serve 6 - the recipe serves 8 but I'm not so sure - you need:
450g strong plain flour
pinch of salt
4 eggs
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil


Make a well in the flour, add the salt and mix in the eggs and oil. I decided to do this in my KitchenAid, though I started off using the dough hook (pictured) then found it was easier with the normal mixing blade.

When you have a ball of dough you need to knead it for about ten minutes (or as long as you can bear!). It ought to look rather smoother than this.

Here's the KitchenAid spaghetti attachment, it comes with three metal attachments - one to roll the pasta, one to make spaghetti and one to make fettucine.

It was easy to set up - simply unscrew the small round disc on the front of the KitchenAid and screw in the pasta attachment. Then when you turn the KitchenAid on, the rollers on the attachment start moving, and you can vary the speed as you would with the normal mixer.

Break the ball of dough into three pieces and flatten one piece. Put the rollers on their widest setting (1) then feed the dough through - it will be rolled out and get longer and flatter.

Change the setting to 2 and repeat - the dough will get longer and flatter

And one last time on setting 3

Here are the pieces of pasta - I had to cut each strip in half as I didn't have enough room on the worktop.

Change the KitchenAid attachment to the spaghetti cutter and feed each piece of pasta through. In a matter of seconds you'll have spaghetti!

I ended up with a large bowlful of pasta - probably enough for 6 people

You can dry the pasta to use later, in which case you need to separate the strands and hang them apparently, or you can cook it right away. As I wasn't sure how long this would take I made the pasta about an hour and a half before dinner, and made the mistake of leaving it in the bowl, so the strands did clump together quite a bit.

Still, it was great to be eating fresh pasta that I had made myself - though I would like to use 00 flour if I can get hold of it next time.

I also received the KitchenAid Recipe Collection for my birthday last year, from my boyfriend's brother and his wife as they knew I was getting the KitchenAid. It has several recipes with pasta and I used the classic bolognese sauce recipe from the book though I adapted it to leave out the chopped carrot and celery, as I knew my boyfriend wouldn't eat it.

You need:
1 tbsp olive oil
half an onion, finely chopped
minced beef for two people -I freeze two or three portions when I buy a pack so can't give an exact quantity
1 clove garlic
400g tin of tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup dry white wine or water
1/2 cup milk

Chop the onion and crush the garlic and fry over a medium heat

Add the mince and fry until browned

Add the white wine and milk and cook for about 10 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated

Add the tin of tomatoes and simmer over a low heat for about half an hour and season to taste.

I was so excited telling my boyfriend about the spaghetti attachment and serving the pasta I had made that I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish! You can probably imagine what spaghetti bolognese looks like though :-) 

This is only the second time I've ever made fresh pasta; the first time was several years ago at a corporate entertainment cookery class where I had a lot of help, so I was really pleased with this and am already looking forward to making it again.

I'm sending this to Pasta Please, a monthly blogging challenge guest hosted this month by Briciole on behalf of Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes, as their challenge this month is to make your own fresh pasta.

I'm also sending this to Chris at Cooking Around The World for his monthly geographical challenge; this month he has chosen Italy. What's more Italian than spaghetti bolognese?