Buffalo sauce is one of my favourite store cupboard essentials so I’m always looking for new ways to incorporate it into our meal plans and that’s how this little number came about. This is a lovely comforting pasta recipe which is not only quick and easy to whip up, but its packed with lots of lovely flavours.
I’ve been meaning to post this recipe for months and something always seems to come before it!! So without further ado….I discovered my favourite restaurant of all time, Sugo Pasta Kitchen, some years back when we lived in Manchester and after I tasted their House Sugo I knew I would never find a better pasta dish. Time after time I went back with my hubbie, family or friends and I thought ‘I must try something else this time’ but on every single occasion I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to have a bowl of this heavenly pasta.
Burger and Pasta…two of my favourite foods so surely the dream combo? The answer is yes, yes it is! I saw this dish on a restaurant menu months ago and thought I’ve got to recreate this at home myself. Not only is it delicious, it’s all done in the one pan so it’s really easy and creates minimal washing up. Not only that but it’s a perfect dish for kids as it combines all the lovely flavours of a classic burger and makes 6 portions. Perfect to feed the whole family and still have leftovers.
I adore Nduja. What is that, you ask? It’s the most wonderful spicy, spreadable pork sausage which comes from the region of Calabria in Southern Italy. Having tried it for the first time at an Italian restaurant in Manchester, it’s an ingredient that until recently, I struggled to get my hands on regularly enough to cook with at home (now we are back in the North east). You can imagine my joy then, when I discovered that my local deli now sells it! Cue me always having a pack in the fridge, ready to add to dishes whenever the opportunity presents itself.
This recipe is so quick to prepare but it’s really important you do everything at the same time so it’s nice and hot when you serve it. In the main recipe I’ve included my take on a traditional carbonara but below I’ve also included a couple of variations which you can try if you want to either mix things up or bulk the recipe out further. Continue reading
I am a huge fan of pesto, in particular when its home made. The fresh and vibrant flavours can really lift a dish to the next level. When I was flicking through this months Good Food magazine, a recipe for Broccoli Pesto and Pancetta Pasta really took my fancy as not only did it involve pesto, but it used a whole load of broccoli which is packed with goodness. To start with I tweaked the recipe to make it WW friendly but I found that the recipe in the magazine didn’t actually have much taste so I continued to tweak and taste until it was perfect. The result is the recipe below.
As you will have seen in many of the other recipes on my site, I love using sausage meat as a cheap, quick and easy way to make a filling and tasty tea and this recipe is exactly that. Whacking everything into a blender right at the start means both minimal chopping and means that rustling up this dish doesn’t take much longer than cooking the pasta. This is also a great dish to make for little ones as blending everything disguises many of the veggies that you may find hard to get into their meals usually and you end up with a bolognaise type texture for the sauce which always goes down a storm.
Who doesn’t love Mac and Cheese!? A few of you may have tried the other Mac and Cheese recipe on my site which uses Butternut Squash to recreate the smooth and creamy texture of a regular Mac and Cheese and I love it but this week I thought I would try and make a more traditional style Mac and Cheese – whilst still keeping it WW friendly. The result, I have to say, was amazing. This is probably one of my hubbie and I’s favourite dishes I’ve created in a while as its both cheesily good and bursting with that lovely smoky chorizo flavour. It’s a little higher in points than other dishes but it really doesn’t feel like a ‘diet’ dish so in my view, it’s worth every single point! Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!
One of my favourite changes brought about by Flex was that salmon, one of my favourite fish, became 0sp. I’d always eaten a lot of salmon anyway but, since the change, I’ve been using it in ways I may have avoided a little before, such as here with pasta and a creamy sauce.
This recipe came about one Saturday night when I wanted to make a quick and easy dinner with the ingredients I had in the fridge/store cupboard. I threw them all into a plastic bag, headed to my sisters and freestyled to see what I could come up with. The result was the delicious pasta dish which we both thoroughly enjoyed (I could have quite happily licked the bowl!).