Tag Archives: pasta

For the love of Pasta

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For the savvy pasta eaters amongst us, you might have been aware that it was World Pasta Day this week, and while I seemed to have gotten this far in life without having acknowledged it, for 2017 that was going to change.

It was time to pasta up.

With no clear idea of what to make for dinner besides a generic pasta dish, I decided to keep it easy. There are many reasons for this. The primary one? I have no interest in spending half a day cooking a dinner that will be consumed in three and a half minutes flat. (Obviously longer if the kids hate it on sight.)

But they didn’t, of course they didn’t. It’s pasta. Number one crowd pleasing dinner time plate. Have pasta, can cook. They key to a rocking simple pasta dish is a great olive oil, great parmesan and a toothsome pasta. If you have those three rockin’ things, well the rest of the dish is up to you.

 

Quick and Easy Pasta Additions

Pangritata

rocket, garlic and lemon zest

cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella

chilli, garlic and parsley

Ricotta Pasta- Frugal Friday

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ricotta pasta- cityhippyfarmgirl

pasta- cityhippyfarmgirl

The secret to this dish is quality ingredients in the pasta and the ricotta. Pay that little bit more or even better make your own of both.

Super quick, easy and frugal for a Friday.

Ricotta Pasta

cook up some great pasta

stir through some excellent ricotta

in a pot add some

local garlic and olive oil

quickly stir through some

frozen peas or if you are lucky, fresh ones

pop that on top of your pasta

and roughly rip some garden mint on top

and eat with gusto.

frugal-friday-pasta || cityhippyfarmgirl

Pasta Frittata- Frugal Friday

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Pasta frittata. So darn tooting easy, it’s not funny.

About 5 minutes before you want to eat dinner. Get that left over cooked pasta out of the fridge. Depending on how much pasta is there, add a few eggs. Use a fork to mix it through, you want the pasta well coated. In a thick bottomed frying pan add a good couple of slurps of olive oil, then pop in your egg pasta. Spread it round until it’s even, whack the lid on, medium heat and it’s ready when there is no runny bits of egg.

Too easy.

Want a bit more taste to it? Add any cooked vegetables that are also lingering in the fridge, (garlic roasted vegetables, steamed broccoli, garlicky zucchini etc). What ever you’ve got, stick it in with the pasta and egg mixture, and pop that lid on.

Or keep it plain, and serve with a seasonal salad.

As this is a very budget friendly, minimal effort, easy peasy, healthy kinda dinner. It will leave ample room to savour the Chocolate Brandy Layer Cake for later.

Buon Appetito.

Making your own Ravioli

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I have a new toy…

A lovely new ravioli cutter.

Ravioli I love, but the frozen bought stuff hurts. My belly is never happy after I eat it, so I stopped years and years ago. It wasn’t worth the pain, and the taste was always such a disappointment. The kind of dinner that seemed like a good idea at the time, and then nothing but sore tummy and oh whose idea was this anyway?

After finding this new little toy and making our own though, oh happy belly… It’s light, it’s tasty, and it screams eat me now and perhaps a little glass of red on the side.

Pasta

550 gms Fine semolina flour

300 mls water (approx)

Knead dough until a lovely elastic consistency. It should be a smooth ball of dough.

Next, cut off small portions, and feed into the pasta machine. Flatten and thining out, (we went to level 4).

Ravioli Mixture

1 red capsicum (pepper) finely diced

1 small block of fetta crumbled

Lightly cook the capsicum in a little olive oil, just for a few minutes until soft. Add the fetta, mix well.

Placing one long strip on the bottom and then dropping small spoonfuls of mixture evenly spaced between. Another long strip of pasta over the top and with my new cutting toy… hey presto!

Serve with a simple sauce. Olive oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, ripped up fresh basil, a little salt and serve with grated parmesan.

As I have said with my other hand made pasta dishes, (orechiette and pici) keep the sauce simple. All the taste and love is in the pasta you have made. Don’t complicate it, and let the sauce be the accompaniment to the love you can taste in the pasta.

* If you don’t have a pasta machine, the same results can easily be done with a simple rolling pin…and if no rolling pin, a glass bottle will do the trick as well.