Monday 9 January 2012

Who's pasta?

Following my zen diet is pretty easy when cooking for myself, but when I have friends round for dinner who may not enjoy as healthy tasting food as I do, it's much more tempting to serve up something less healthy but that I know will taste good. So that's why it's good to have a repertoire of recipes that are as tasty as they are healthy up your sleeve.

So last night I served up this lovely dish from Jamie, my fave chef when it comes easy Italian cuisine, for my friends and in the words of the lovely Aj, who's favourite food is cheese, 'it was amazing'! Suffice to say all plates were clean by the end of the meal and it's ridiculously easy to make so great for the cooking averse.

The recipe is an old one and a good one - Pasta Puttanesca, which translates as 'whore's pasta' and is a salty and slightly spicy southern-italian tomato based dish, low in fat but high in flavour.

It was first introduced to me by my wonderful flatmate Davide who came to our university from Verona with a book full of recipes written out from his mother. He used to cook this up for lunch and I never tired of eating it. Sadly he never translated the book for me, so I use the Jamie recipe but I like to up the protein level so I add either a tin of drained kidney beans or two tins of line-caught tuna with the tomatoes to make this a filling and hearty dish.

Last night I used tuna and served it with a side of fresh watercress, for added greens, drizzled with olive oil. You cook the pasta separately so I did one pot of gluten-free pasta for me and one pot of regular pasta for my pals.

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