Pasta is often a surefire solution for when we suddenly have to rustle up a meal. A quick-and-easy, healthy food that makes a proper meal popular with young and old alike that can be made with ingredients close to hand.
You can create a simple, delicious pasta dish just as easily with fresh ingredient as with the tins and packets of food you’ve got in your cupboard.
Cheese and tinned tuna to the rescue
Simply add some strained tinned tuna to a tomato sauce on a low heat and add some slices of cheese or a dollop of cream cheese. Let the cheese melt and add salt and pepper to taste. A quick sauce you can add to the pasta as soon as it’s ready.
Poor man’s carbonara
With a carton of longlife cream or a tin of evaporated milk you can whip up a pasta carbonara in minutes. Add some chopped onion, mushrooms and cubes of bacon, turkey or ham and sauté briefly in a frying pan with a dash of extra-virgin olive oil. Add the cream or evaporated milk at the end. Sprinkle some oregano on top and add salt and pepper to taste.
Tasty pickled mussels
You’ll be very pleasantly surprised by this simple recipe served warm. Sauté some garlic and add the cooked pasta to get some flavour. Then add a tin of pickled mussels (and sauce) and three spoonfuls of tomato. Stir well until the pasta changes colour. Some chunks of tomato or red pepper will set it off a treat.
And talking of sautéing… what else can we throw in?
Start with a dash of extra-virgin olive oil and let your imagination run wild. Some crushed garlic, a couple of cayenne peppers, a sprinkling of dried basil, some pine nuts or walnuts. Or maybe some pitted black olives, chopped onion, peppers and any other vegetables you’ve got in the fridge. Pasta is a highly versatile dish that’s open to a whole range of different ingredients and is a great way of using the many different foodstuffs in the cupboard.
