Arrabiata Pasta Sauce with Peppers

Pixie loves peppers and Pixie loves pasta and Pixie loves chilli.  So this my Pixie Pleasing creation - a cross between pepperonata and arrabiata sauce.  I've christened it Pepperbiata.

The chopping of the peppers can be a faff but this recipe makes a big batch.  So for the two of us we get three generous servings out of one lot of tedious chopping.

Serves 6

• 2 red peppers – chopped into stubby matchsticks
• 2 yellow peppers - chopped into stubby matchsticks
• 2 orange peppers - chopped into stubby matchsticks
• 1 very large or 2 medium white onions – finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic -  minced
• 2 -3 red chillis – finely chopped  [pips included] – not the fiery Bird’s Eye chilli that you’d use in Indian curry but the milder variety found in UK supermarkets which are actually raw Jalapeno chillis
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil – this may seem like a lot but it is integral to the flavour and texture of the sauce
• 1 bottle passata [approx. 690g - sieved tomatoes]
• 2 x 400g tins  of chopped tomatoes
• Heaped tablespoon of sugar
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 x heaped teaspoon of cornflour dissolved in 2 tbsp of water
• Freshly grated parmesan cheese
• Torn basil leaves to garnish

·        Gently fry onions and garlic in olive oil until transparent – approx. 10 minutes

·        Add chilli and fry for another minute

·        Add peppers - turn up heat and fry for about 5 minutes, stirring continuously

·        Add passata and tins of tomatoes and stir everything together

·        Add sugar, salt and pepper and stir

·        Once bubbling turn the heat down low and simmer for 30 – 40 minutes

·        Add the cornflour mixture and stir through and simmer for another 5 minutes

·        Serve on the pasta of your choice and sprinkle liberally with parmesan cheese

Cooks notes: 

·        the idea of adding the cornflour is to prevent the sauce from separating once mixed into the pasta.  I really don’t like any watery residue on the plate or bowl.  It also helps to give the sauce a silkier consistency

·        this sauce tastes even better the next day or even up to 3 days later as the flavours have time to meld together

·        this sauce freezes really well

Homemade Basil Pesto

Usually when I buy store bought herb pots they perform dismally and limp to their death in a few weeks, no matter how much I tend them.

Recently I bought a pot of basil that thrived and turned into a bush - it must like my kitchen windowsill.  It grew so well that I decided that I might just have enough leaves to make some pesto.  A first for me.  I found a recipe in Delicious Magazine which suited the amount of basil I had.

Ingredients

1. 1 small garlic clove
2. Pinch of sea salt
3. 25g pine nuts, very lightly toasted
4. 50g fresh basil leaves (this is the amount of picked leaves you get from a large pot from the supermarket)
5. 25g Parmesan, finely grated
6. Juice of ½ lemon
7. 125ml extra-virgin olive oil

Method

METHOD 1

1. In a small food processor
2. Put the garlic and a pinch of sea salt in the bowl and pulse, then add the pine nuts and pulse again until roughly chopped (be careful not to over-process). Add the basil and pulse carefully until it is well mixed but still very textured. Turn into a bowl and stir in the Parmesan and lemon juice. Pour in the olive oil, mixing to a juicy paste. Season to taste.

METHOD 2

1. In a pestle and mortar
2. Put the garlic and sea salt in a mortar and pound with the pestle until smooth. Add the pine nuts and pound until they are roughly crushed. Add the basil and continue to pound and mash, bruising the leaves, until it starts to form a paste. Turn into a bowl and stir through the Parmesan and lemon juice. Pour in the oil and mix to a juicy paste, seasoning as you go.

Chef's tip

To use:

1. As well as stirring it into pasta, add a teaspoonful to a bowl of minestrone soup for an instant flavour boost.

2. Spread onto griddled bruschetta and top with fresh ricotta for a tasty starter.

3. Slather over chicken breasts or a piece of white fish, wrap in prosciutto and bake for a simple supper.

4. When cooking mussels, add a couple of teaspoons to the broth.

5. Stir into crème fraîche or mascarpone and use as a dip with spring veg.

6. It’s perfect with simple antipasti such as mozzarella, tomatoes, prosciutto and crusty bread.

7. Stir it into mashed potato for a great flavour.

To store:  Put the pesto in a sterilised jar and cover the surface of the pesto with a layer of olive oil. Top with a lid or cling film and keep in the fridge for up to 1 week.

To freeze: Leave out the Parmesan, spoon into ice-cube trays and open-freeze. Tip into freezer bags and keep frozen for up to 3 months. To use, defrost the required amount and stir through some Parmesan.

I used the food processor method and this is the result:

Quick and easy Puttanesca Sauce that delivers big flavours

I call this pasta sauce the “Thai food of the Italians”. This is because it hits all the tastebuds like a steam train - salty, sweet, sour and hot. Even if you don’t like anchovies, I beg you to leave them in this sauce. If you use a moderate amount, like my 5 in the recipe below, you won’t actually taste much fishiness, however, the saltiness and meatiness just adds an extra dimension to the sauce. Using fresh herbs in the recipe scales new heights of savouriness.

If you can’t get your hands on passata or cherry tomatoes don’t worry you could just use two tins of diced/chopped tomatoes. The end result won’t be much different. I like to use cherry tomatoes because I find their round plumpness is pleasing to the eye and when you bite into them you get some extra sweetness.

This “saucy” sauce has a few legends surrounding it and there are a gazillion recipes out there using massively differing amounts of the standard ingredients – this is my version that I’ve tinkered together and perfected over time.  Give this forgiving sauce a bash and you'll wonder how you lived without it.

• 6 medium or 4 large fresh sages leaves finely chopped

• Stalk of fresh rosemary taken off stem and finely chopped

• 3 large cloves of garlic finely minced

• 1 tsp of dried oregano

• Good size pinch of chilli flakes or a medium red chilli finely dices including seeds

• 4 tablespoons of olive oil

• 5 anchovy fillets finely chopped [or more to taste]

• 1 cup of passata [sieved tomatoes]

• 1 400g tin of cherry tomatoes in tomato sauce [the best you can find]

• 1 tbsp of sugar

• Pepper to taste

• 1 heaped cup of black olives, cut in half

• ¾ cup of capers, salted best but in brine will also do

• Fresh parsley finely chopped for sprinkling on to serve


Method:

Heat the olive oil over a low heat

Add the sage, rosemary and garlic and cook very gently for 5 minutes [the garlic mustn’t get any colour at all but should cook enough, so it doesn’t taste rawAdd the chilli flakes and oregano and cook for a minute

Add the anchovies and cook for a minute

Add the passata, olives, capers and stir together

Add the sugar

Add the tin of cherry tomatoes

Season with pepper [I don’t use salt, as the ingredients are salty enough]

Simmer  over a very low heat for 5 minutes [don't make the mistake of letting this sauce simmer for too long, it's not meant to cook for ages because the idea behind this sauce is for it to have a fresh and not stewed taste]

Tip - I find that tomato based sauces which arent' cooked for  long enough to reduce will often  have watery tomato juice separating underneath the pasta.  To avoid this dissolve one heaped teaspoon of cornflour powder in a little water and stir into the sauce a minute before serving.  The result is a slightly thicker sauce that doesn't separate whatsoever and it doesn't affect the taste of the sauce at all.

Sprinkle on fresh parsley to serve


Serve on pasta of your choice. Most popular seems to be spaghetti or penne.
Serves: 2 large portions, or 4 as a starter

Photo courtesy of Flickr - dboy CCL

Tasty spaghetti and meatballs

I've devised a tasty and easy basil and tomato sauce into which I plop fried meatballs.  I confess that  I "cheat" by using ready-made beef meatballs from Sainsburys or ready-made Swedish meatballs, which are a mixture of beef and pork and slightly smaller.  I used to make my own meatballs they take ages and taste-wise wasn't hugely different.  It also meant that it became a weekend recipe because it would take too long to do after a day at work.

This recipe makes four large or six medium servings:

3 tbsp olive oil
1 very large or two medium onions
2 cloves of garlic
Half a teaspoon of chilli flakes or one large fresh red chilli
1 bottle of pasatta
2 [400g] cans of chopped tomatoes
1 large bunch of fresh basil leaves
3 tbsp sugar
salt and freshly ground pepper
24 [2 packs of 12] meatballs
2 tsp cornflour mixed with 3 tbsp water
Freshly grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle on just before eating

• In a shallow non-stick frying pan slicked with a little oil brown the meatballs in batches - I have a large frying pan so do them in 2 batches.  Transfer on to kitchen roll to absorb any excess oil
• Heat the olive oil to medium heat in a large, heavy based pot
• Finely chop the onions
• Finely crush or chop the garlic
• Add to the onions and garlic to the oil
• Bring them to sizzling point, stirring all the time and then turn down the heat to low
• Allow the onions and garlic to gently sweat for at least 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and making sure they don't brown whatsoever
• Add the chilli and cook for another few minutes
• Add the two tins of tomatoes and stir
• Add the bottle of passata and stir
• Bring to a bubbling boil, stirring all the time
• Add the sugar and season well with salt and freshly ground pepper
• Pluck the basil leaves off the plant or stem and roll between your fingers to release the oils and then tear into small pieces and add to the sauce
• Add the meatballs a simmer for 15 -20 mins - infusing the sauce with a lovely meaty flavour
• 5 minutes before serving dissolve the cornflour in the water in a small glass or mug and stir into the sauce.  This ensures a lovely silky consistency and prevents watery tomato juice accumulating under the pasta

Serve sauce and meatballs on spaghetti or pasta of your choice.  Garnish with basil leaves and sprinke with freshly grated parmesan cheese to taste.

Tastes even better the next day.
Freezes well for up to 3 months.

Photo courtesy of Flickr CCL - The Culinary Geek

Tomato & Red Pepper Soup - a disaster makes good

I make a really great pasta sauce with onions, orange, red and yellow peppers, tomato passata, tinned tomatoes, medium red chillies and a bit of sugar.  It's one of Anthony's favourites.  I hadn't made it in a while and he was really looking forward to it.

In Sainsbury's they had run out yellow peppers, however there were some in their "value" bags and I persuaded him to make an exception and buy something "value".  So, I made the sauce exactly the same as always and all seemed fine until it came to dishing it up.  Upon hitting the rice [we sometimes have pasta sauce with brown rice]  the sauce became very runny and strangely enough it had very little flavour.

Lesson learnt.  Even though "value" peppers look the same and feel the same, they're NOT the same.  For the life of me I don't know how they're grown to look fine and yet in ever other way be fake.  I guess it's down to lack of sunshine? 

Anthony asked me how I could possibly think that the half price peppers could possibly be the same as the loose ones?  I replied, quite loudly it must be said, "BECAUSE THEY LOOKED THE SAME!".  I'm usually not such a trusting and naive soul but I thought, just this once, we might get away with paying less for a vegetable.

He ate half his dinner with very long teeth and then came up with a brainwave.  Why not liquidise the sauce and make soup?

This I did, adding some little chunks of dried chorizo sausage and a can of chickpeas.  It turned out fab and I've just eaten some left-overs for lunch.

In fact I may just buy value peppers again just to make into soup. 

Are there any "value" fruit and vege which you've found have much flavour?

Photos courtesy of:  dejahthoris flickr.com - creative commons