spaghetti – Food That We Make

Walnut, Broccoli and Ricotta Spaghetti.

hannahnicklin — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 21:08:08 +0000

Things that always go well together: olive oil, garlic, parsley and lemon zest. Add in some good greens and healthy nut fats, along with some wholegrain pasta and you have super tasty, super easy, reasonably quick, brilliant food for doing exercise on – especially if you’re veggie. Protein and fats in the cheese, oil and nuts, carbs and good grains in the wholewheat pasta, iron in the broccoli. This is higher in calories than I’d normally eat in a meal of my own making – just over 600, and you could probably cut it down by reducing the pasta (don’t reduce the fats, we’re all up on the evidence on lo-fat diets being useless for losing weight, right?), but as I’ve trained and run a marathon recently I’ve been looking for good energy and recovery meals. This is a brill one. And nice and easy to do with mates too. Original from the book Easy Vegetarian One-Pot. RECIPE:

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 30 mins | Serves: 2
Nutritional info: 691 kcal, 74g carbs, 35g fat, 23g protein

INGREDIENTS PHOTO: (I forgot the parsley)

So, first up, stick the walnuts in an oven on around 180’c for 6-8 minutes, so they’re browning but not getting hard or bitter.

Then chop off about 2cm of the end of the broccoli – the dried up bit, and then slice the rest of the stalk right up to the florets, chop it up a little if massively thick. Then add the oil to a large frying pan, and gently sautee the stalk sections for about 5 minutes.

Then add the broccoli heads, and keep them cooking until tender. 5-8 minutes. MEANWHILE. squash and chop the garlic, chop the parsley, zest and juice the lemon, and probably take the walnuts out already.

By the time you’ve prepped all the stuff, the broccoli should be about tender. Add all of the stuff apart from the ricotta and lemon juice:

heat this through for 5 minutes, and put the pasta on.

Then add the ricotta and lemon juice, stir around and heat very gently until the pasta is ready. Season well. Really well. Lots of salt (I like salt, please make sure it’s to your taste).

When pasta is ready, drain, combine, serve, enjoy.

Green bean, chickpea and fresh tomato minestrone.

hannahnicklin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:31:23 +0000

I always thought minestrone was a meat-y taste, and I didn’t have much hope for a veggie version (vegan, in fact), but, it turns out, TOTES WRONG. This was amazingly minestroney-y. Proper stuff. Might be to do with the marmite modification, but still, that brill mix of really substantial pasta and veg, protein from the chickpeas, and the slightly brothy watery stuff that is instant comfort-taste to me. highly recommend, this, and keeps throughout the week pretty well if you don’t mind slightly swollen spaghetti.

Serves: 6 | Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 30 mins
Nutritional info: 227 kcal, 35g carbs, 7g fat, 8g protein

Ingredienty:

Prep: get the stock boiling. Chop the onion, cube the tomatoes, crush and chop the garlic, break up the spaghetti, drain the chick peas, chop up the beans into 1-2cm pieces.

Get a big pan, put the oil and onion in it. Soften the onion. I have illustrated this in case you are uncertain.

Add garlic. Fry for a couple of minutes more.

Add everything that isn’t the rocket.

Bring to the boil, simmer for 15-20 minutes, until pasta is done.

When the spaghetti is cooked, stir through the rocket. Season to taste. Serve.

How easy?

Brown Lentil Bolognaise

hannahnicklin — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:03:13 +0000

OK, so this is a pretty heavily modified version of a Rose Elliot staple. Do recommend Rose Elliot’s Complete Vegetarian for someone starting out on it all. Especially if you need simple meals for mates or families. It’s basically got everything, baking, sweets, soups, mains, lunches. Not a ‘picture’ book recipe book but big and full of brilliant stuff. So yes, this is a brown lentil bolognaise (using green lentils, I should honestly point out), spelled differently because THAT’S HOW I SPELL IT, and I changed lots in the recipe. As I went, too, so some stuff missing from the pictures. Sorry. IMAGINE THEM.

Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 25 mins | Servings: 2
Nutritional Info: 538kcal 77g carbs 16g fat 20g protein (this doesn’t include the splash of red wine or parmesan)

Ingredients (not pictured, chopped toms, parsley, wine, sugar)

OK, it’s time to SOFTEN THAT ONION. About 5 minutes

Add the garlic, mushrooms, celery and carrots, fry until tender, about 10 mins

At this point add a splash of wine if you’re going to, let it reduce by about half before adding chopped tomatoes (not pictured), drained lentils, puree, basil. Season. Simmer.

I’m going to go ahead and assume you can cook spaghetti. The nutritional info on this’un uses wholewheat spaghetti so, about 10 minutes all in all. Salted oily water. Set that to go, all the while simmering the bolognaise, top up liquid with water if it’s drying up (or wine) add a pinch of sugar to taste, and towards the end adjust the seasoning.

Drain the spaghetti, add a bit more salt to it, some chopped parsley if you’ve got any to hand and are feeling fancy, and scrunch some black pepper into it, toss, pop on your plate, and serve the bolognaise on top with a nice bit of parmesan and remaining scraps of basil:

It’s better than Rose’s, I reckon. But, y’know, shoulders of giants and all that.