Little Meals: Fasta Pasta
Pasta is a great store-cupboard staple and can be turned into a meal as complicated or as simple as you please. In this series of articles on “little meals”, the food that is fast and makes either a good lunch or a small dinner for one person, I’ve already written about eggs and today its pasta.
Fast and Fresh
Filled fresh pasta is the perfect fast meal. Boil the kettle, throw the pasta in the pan, add the boiling water and when the pasta looks done three minutes later, it is. Supermarkets have started doing individual portion sizes (around 150g) and personally I like mine with ketchup.
Pasta a la Mum
No, that’s not pasta with mum as part of the dish, that’s pasta as my mother would make it. It goes like this:
Cook some quick-cook pasta. Drain it and return it to the pan. Add some pesto (red, green, spicy, or whatever you like) and add any or all of:
- chopped ham
- peanuts
- tinned pineapple
- fried bacon
- chopped up precooked chicken
- frozen peas (pop these in with the pasta and they turn out perfect)
- leftover veg
Stir and serve with grated cheese on top. Yum!
A variation is to use another sauce other than pesto – the little stir-in sauces are good, or you can work a variation of the weekday spaghetti carbonara recipe if you like.
Do let add a comment if you try these recipes or have variations of your own!
Pasta + tuna + mayonnaise is one of my quick favourites. Will try some of your mum’s combos soon!
Your recipes always make me hungrys. 1 hour 20 mins to lunchtime. Come on. I never make pasta, I get bored of it :s. Maybe I’ll start again.
Hello Simon, hello Saj!
Simon: I really don’t do tuna … in fact I don’t really eat fish of any kind. I do appreciate that mayonnaise goes with everything though :)
Saj: Actually I made myself hungry thinking about the things that could go into “pasta a la mum” … I know what you mean about getting bored of pasta though, I came close when I was a student as I didn’t eat much else.
Pasta (multi-coloured) + red pesto + avocado is quite tasty.
I know so many recipes of pasta, indeed, it was my granny who gave me book of pasta recipes for my birthday. I tried already a half of the book, but still there were anything of the kind you’ve written! that’s nice! So, you are great with your recipe!
Love this post it’s so simple but just reminds me of growing up.My older si and I use dto love having macaroni with tomatoe sauce!simple yet delicious!