Creamy Turkey & Roasted Cherry Tomato Pasta

This recipe is a great alternative if you are looking to cook something Italian that perhaps you have not tasted before. Whether for a regular meal or to impress some guests the roasted turkey, cherry tomatoes, garlic & balsamic vinegar mixed in with the creamy basil sauce definitely give it a WOW factor.

Tuna Cannelloni

Was looking for a recipe that used tinned tuna as its primary ingredient as it’s something I only really use just in my Tuna melt. When I saw this one it just jumped off the page to me, it really is just bursting with flavours. I have split the recipe into the 3 easy stages required to complete it to make it easy to follow. The bigger the cannelloni you can find the easier the preparation.

Serve with a fresh salad and my Garlic Mozzarella Bread

Italian Breadcrumbs

Every now and again you stumble onto a recipe that you know will be with you for a very long time…..an absolute piece of pure genius that every time you eat it, you enjoy every single bite and cannot wait to make it again

Well this recipe for Italian Breadcrumbs is one such recipe…..

Poached Salmon in Cream & White Wine

This Pasta is a very welcome addition to my weekly menu as yet again it all can be gotton together in about 15 minutes. As the pasta takes about 10 minutes I generally start to cook the pasta after I have sautéed the onions and just before I add the brown sugar.

A good tip at the end it to add your cream to your cooked pasta first and add your onions & Salmon pieces when you serve the dish.

Macaroni with Cheese

This has been a while…..

I have recently returned from a very enjoyable and long holiday and I got to admit have taken some time to get back into my routine with cooking etc. I have however found myself trawling thru my old favourites from this site as a help to get me back into things

First up on my return is a quite legendary dish from the States that is amazingly simple to get together. One note on it when choosing your cheeses: take parmesan & mozzarella for definite but then you can choose whatever other grated cheese you prefer with those 2

Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup is one of the cornerstones of Italian cuisine. It is essentially a vegetable broth with whatever vegetables are in season at that moment. So if you do not like one of the vegetables below you can easily remove it. Also if you want it vegetarian just remove the bacon.

The process of getting it together is actually fairly simple. The one comment I would make with my own recipe is that I was unable to locate an Italian bean such as cannellini or borlotti so I used red kidney beans. If your beans are fresh or dried you would need to obviously cook them first.

Broccoli & Cherry Tomato Pasta

The simplicity in this dish is what really makes it so special. As part of my €5 meal concept this meal is less than €2 to get together once you have the ingredients in-house.

To prepare the dish it is just so simple and it all can be done in the time it takes to cook your pasta. You will flash fry small florets of broccoli in garlic & chilli. Then this will be added with chopped cherry tomato to cooked pasta and chopped fresh herbs (if you have some available). All served on a warm plate with grated parmesan on top.

Super Quick, Tasty & Cheap……really the perfect combination to any meal

Prawn and Chilli Linguine

This recipe is super quick, tasty and delicious. 

Butterflied king prawns are quickly cooked in a hot pan with garlic & red chilli before being tossed in cooked linguine & rocket (rucula).

Spaghetti Bolognese

There are many ways to make a Spaghetti Bolognese & the debates on what is the best one are far ranging. For myself I like to keep it simple with 3 steps.

Step 1: When I make one I like to always make my Tomato Sauce
Step 2: Then separately I like to brown my mince & let half a glass of red wine absorb completely into the mince. After this has done I will now blend the meat in a food processor, the main reason I do this is twofold:
1.    The mince can be quite tough & blending it will really break it up & make it very tender
2.    The blended mince when added to your tomato sauce will now race up & down each individual piece of spaghetti when you serve it.
Step 3: I will fry some finely chopped onions, carrots & green pepper with garlic & chilli. Then I will add the tomato sauce & also blended mince.

Tomato Sauce with Meatballs

The most time consuming part of this recipe is the Tomato Sauce. But once that is cooked a real simple meat ball to add is with Sausage meat. It is all real easy in that you will just squeeze out the sausage meat into even sized balls and cook on medium to high heat.

Then you will add it all together with your cooked pasta & serve with grated cheese

Tomato Sauce

This is by far and away the best Italian Tomato pasta sauce I have ever tasted.

A good tomato sauce was something that always interested me but I was never happy with my efforts until I was shown this recipe by a good friend. What I learnt the most from it is that simplicity works.

The sauce has a few layers or stages to it and all up you will want to set aside about 2 hours to cook it. Within this time you do not have to be standing by the side of the sauce as you will cook everything on a low heat and only are needed to stir and keep a watchful eye on the sauce.

Roasted Vegetable Pasta

This pasta dish is perfect for a Vegetarian option or if you feel like a light & tasty pasta. Roasting the vegetables is similar to my previous post of Roast Vegetable Lasagne but this time you will add them to your pasta with a combination of cheddar cheese & a mustard/chilli/coriander cream sauce.

The Cream sauce is very much up to you, I like to use grained mustard with a hint of sweet chilli sauce with chopped coriander leaves. I find the mustard brings out the flavours in the dish. Also as I like things spicy I add 2 devil eye chilli’s when roasting the vegetables so if that is not for you do not put them in.

All up you get a very tasty pasta dish that is super easy to make, serve with my Mozzarella Garlic Bread for that perfect compliment

Insalata di Frutti di Mare: Seafood Salad

A Salad from the Sea: I really do love this salad when I am looking for that something extra from my dinner salad. The principle for me here is to use up to 3 different types of seafood and add this to light & fresh salad ingredients.

Seafood wise fresh is always best of course but you can of course use tinned fish such as tuna & crab as it is considerably cheaper than the fresher alternatives. Other options are of course prawns & smoked salmon.

I like to combine all the ingredients together with a light lemon based vinaigrette which keeps the salad light, crisp & fresh.

Day 14: Pepper & Pesto Pasta

Day 14
Slovakia 3 Italy 2
Paraguay 0 New Zealand 0
Netherlands 2 Cameroon 1
Japan 3 Denmark 1

Disaster for the blog.......Italy are out of the World Cup. I was so confident they would get thru that tonight I prepared something Italian that is quick and easy, not one of my more complex meals that I could of done. Ah well, at least Japan are thru....food wise that is.

Pink and Green Fusilli

This recipe really jumped off the page to me when I was flicking thru the Pasta Recipe book I bought when I was in Rome and I really couldn't wait to try it.

What I instantly loved about it was the sheer simplicity of it but also the combination of flavours within it.

Creamy 3 Cheese Pasta

Wednesdays are always a funny one for me with the evening meal…..I got to leave the house at 7.30 and sometimes get home as late as 6.30 so this leaves me not much time to be super creative in the kitchen.

Roast Vegetable Lasagne with 3 cheeses

I made this today as I needed to make something veggie so I combined my 2 favourite veggie recipes together to make this very tasty lasagne. Roast vegetables (which I normally serve with pasta and crème fraiche) and the tomato sauce recipe form the basis of this lasagne. Throughout the lasagne there is a sprinkling of 3 different cheeses – Parmesan, Mozzarella & Gouda and is of course topped with a béchamel sauce.

Mozzarella Garlic Bread

Been playing around for quite some years at always making my own garlic bread as it is always so much tastier and cheaper than the ready made options you buy in the 
supermarkets. Also when making the butter you can really play around with it and make it to your own taste. My personal preference is a garlic & herb butter with a sprinkling of garlic salt & black pepper also in the mix.

Fusilli with Bacon and Cream

The pure beauty of this recipe is that in the time it takes for the kettle to boil and pasta to cook you are ready to combine the cream and serve.

Its perfect if you want something quick and tasty

Avocado, Tomato & Mozzarella Salad

The Italian love-in starts here....just back from a 5 day trip to Rome where we walked the length and breath of the city, ate great food, overdosed on Italian Ice-cream and have come back inspired to try and master as many different Italian recipes I can over the coming weeks.

As you can see from what I brought back with me I think I got every base covered with cookbooks on Bruschetta, Antipasta, Italian breads, BBQing & an unbelievable book on Pasta. Along with Olive Oil, Balsamic, Pesto, Parmasan, Mozzeralla & many types of pasta.