Spicy Pasta Recipe

Ingredients for Spicy Pasta:

• Some pasta (200g Dry?) – Shells are the best as they capture the sauce
• Green Pesto (half a pot of bought or make your own with recipe at the end)
• Tomato Paste
• 2 x Red Peppers (cut in half and roasted in the oven – after roasting, chop into chunks)
• 1 x Onion (cut into quarters and roasted in the oven – after roasting, cut into chunks)
• 4 fat garlic cloves (roasted in the oven)
• 10 Cherry Tomato (Cut in half – can roast a little whole first for extra flavour if you fancy)
• 10 small Broccoli florets
• 2  Carrots (peeled and cut into cubes)
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• ½ teaspoon chilli powder/Kenyan pepper) (paprika gives heat, so add as much or as little as you like – I like it hot so use some Sri Lanken chilli powder that gives some real heat)
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Method for Spicy Pasta:

1. Boil the pasta, roast the vegetables
2. Drain the pasta, add the vegetables and stir in the pesto (let the heat of the pasta warm the pesto through)
3. Add a good squirt of tomato paste, the spices and stir again ensuring all the pasta is coated. Add  salt and pepper
4. Add the cherry toms
5. Drizzle oil if you like it – makes it a bit smoother and adds the lovely nutty flavour of the oil

(Haven’t tried this but might at the weekend – crumble in a little goats cheese on top and bake in grill for a few minutes – could add an extra edge to it? Maybe even stilton?)

Vegetables can be added/taken away as you wish-  should be a gloopy consistency not too dry with everything covered

For pesto – I usually buy if I’m honest – good shop bought stuff is nice and the cost of pine nuts makes it more expensive to make your own sometimes – more so if you don’t have basil spare!!

I usually use the following recipe

Pesto:

• ½ a clove of garlic, chopped
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 good handfuls of fresh basil, leaves picked and chopped
• a handful of pine nuts, very lightly toasted
• a good handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• extra virgin olive oil

Blitz the garlic and basil, add the nuts and blitz again, add a bit of cheese and blitz.  Put in a bowl and stir in more cheese and oil until it is gloopy and looks like pesto! Salt and pepper to taste.

A nice, quick, healthy teatime dish.