Spaghetti + broccoli

Sounds dull, doesn’t it? But it’s really, really not. It’s creamy and delicious and also full of goodness and I’ve eaten it two days in a row now.

I made a big bowl of this for lunch the other day to celebrate the beginning of Spring but it would of course also be perfect for a simple supper.

OK, the broccoli also looks weirdly kind of fluorescent against the lime green chopping board! I’ll take some new pics next time I make it.

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To make lunch (or dinner) for one you’ll need:

about 100g of broccoli, chopped

one clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

handful of spaghetti (about 100g)

salt and black pepper

dried chilli flakes (if liked)

Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, grated

Put a pan of water with a big pinch of salt over the heat and cover. While it’s coming to the boil chop the broccoli and when the water’s boiling, add the broccoli and boil on a medium heat for about four minutes.

And while that’s cooking, add a good slosh of olive oil, perhaps a tablespoon, to a non-stick pan and fry the garlic very gently, stirring often. Add a little splash of water from the pasta pan if it even thinks about sticking/burning.

When the broccoli has cooked, remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and add to the frying pan with a ladle more of the pasta water so it can continue simmering.

Put the spaghetti into the same pan of water that the broccoli was in - it’ll only add more flavour and goodness to cook in the vegetable water. Cook according to pack instructions or to your taste - I did mine on a medium boil for eight minutes.

Keep stirring the simmering broccoli and it’s going to get really nice and soft. After about five minutes season with salt and pepper - and some dried chilli flakes if liked. Also add about half the cheese and stir in .

Drain the pasta when ready and add to the pan - make sure to reserve a little more of the cooking water in case you want to loosen your sauce any more. Stir, add the rest of the cheese and cook for another minute or two.

Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed and voila.

Creamy delicious nutritious broccoli spaghetti.

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Spaghetti with creamy avocado sauce

Simple, delicious and immune-boosting (vitamins A, C and E are all present in avocados).

Plus we’re adding fresh lemon juice and some gorgeous olive oil to the sauce just to up the goodness stakes.

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Here we go …

For one or for two, basically it’s up to you how runny or thick you make the sauce:

one lovely soft ripe avocado

fresh lemon juice

a glug or so of olive oil

a handful of fresh basil leaves

salt and pepper

a pinch of dried chilli flakes

a little slosh of water if needed to loosen it up or to make the sauce thinner (as you choose)

Blend the sauce ingredients first so that’s ready to go and then cook your spaghetti in a big pan of salted water.

When you drain the pasta, make sure you keep some of the cooking water behind too, just in case you need to loosen the pasta a little more.

Pour the sauce over the pasta and make sure it’s covering all of it - keep mixing!

And then add salt and pepper and grated parmesan - if liked - and some extra fresh basil to garnish.

Super simple, super good for you and super good for this time of year as we head into winter and want our immune systems to be happy and strong.

PS. Yes, it’s unnecessary to have two almost identical photos of the dish but I’m just having one of those days where I can’t decide which I prefer!

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Blue cheese + broccoli spaghetti

This is so simple and so good.

No ingredients list needed really.

But … oh ok then … this is what I used for a big greedy portion for one person …

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spaghetti

broccoli

olive oil

garlic clove, minced

green chilli, minced

lots of blue cheese, Gorgonzola ideally

fresh basil leaves, if you have them

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I just brought a big of water to the boil with a big pinch of salt and cooked the spaghetti for eight minutes.

Added broccoli chopped into quite small bits and boiled for another three minutes.

Drained and ran cold water over so it all stopped cooking any further.

Put a big non-stick pan over a medium heat and added a a dash of oil plus one garlic clove, ;peeled and finely chopped and a green chilli, finely chopped (omit the chilli if you don’t want it spicy of course).

After maybe 30 seconds I tipped in the spaghetti and the broccoli plus some of their cooking water to keep it loose and light and easy.

Also added quite a lot of lovely chopped up Stilton cheese, but any blue cheese will do. I think Gorgonzola would be perfect … but Stilton is what I had.

Put a lid on the pan and cook on a low simmering heat for maybe three minutes more.

Remove from heat, check seasoning, add a few leaves of fresh basil if you have them.

This is a super-simple dish that is just WAY more than the sum of its parts!

Just gorgeous.

And decadent.

And quick.

What more could you ask from an easy quick supper?

NOTHING. RIEN.

It’s kinda perfect.

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Spaghetti for sick days

Spaghetti for when you’re just not feeling so good …. why this recipe?

Because it’s super-simple when you don’t want to faff about making anything more complicated.

Because it’s just perfect comfort food.

And because lots of lovely immune system boosting garlic and antioxident-rich broccoli

And because this one just feels nurturing and lovely. Treating yourself is the best idea when you’re under the weather.

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Cook wholemeal spaghetti in a big pan of boiling water with a pinch of salt for about eight minutes and throw the broccoli in for the last few minutes (approx 4-5).

And then it’s all about making the garlic sauce … the trick is not to put garlic into hot oil all sizzling and burning - no, this is about kind of infusing the olive oil with the garlic.

So the peeled and sliced garlic (one clove or two, up to you, but I’d go with two) is added to the cold pan with cold oil, heated so slowly and when just about to sizzle, remove the pan from the heat and stir again, cool down and little.

Repeat. And repeat. And ... if necessary, repeat.

When you’ve made a beautiful fragrant infused garlic olive oil ... THEN allow it to come to a sizzle and then add in 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes and a ladle full of the pasta cooking water.

Simmer for a minute or two, add the spaghetti and broccoli and keep turning in that gorgeous oil.

Add some grated Parmesan and stir through.

Remove from heat; add more cheese and some ground black pepper and that’s it.

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Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino (garlic, olive oil and chilli)

I’m just in love with the simplest food right now.

I had the most delicious grilled salmon yesterday at a Thai restaurant that I’ll be recreating at home. It was served just with al dente asparagus and a red curry sauce that you actually wanted MORE of (and not less as is so often the case).

I’m going to be trying that one at home very soon.

Last year I also recreated a sauce similar to the one they serve with their delicious grilled squid - again, another dish defined by both simplicity and flavour.

I’m reminded while cooking right now of Coco Chanel’s edict to ‘take one thing off’ before leaving the house.

It’s so tempting to add more (and more). And more.

We all do it.

And unless that is absolutely your style thing - and I’ve definitely seen and admired those who DO pull it off - most of us would benefit from a little paring down.

In our style, our look, in how we spend our time, in our food. In everything.

This recipe could not be more simple.

Yet could also not be more elegant - not just elegant in a cold way but elegant and also very sexy.

Very sensual.

It has to be when it’s just four ingredients, four perfect ingredients, cooked together to create a perfectly simple, elegant, luscious, sensual dish.

The recipe is from a very good book, Made At Home, by the wonderful Giorgio Locatelli.

He talks a little about the dish before sharing the recipe.

He also talks about ‘the sexiest scene’ in a film called Chef (that I am definitely watching as soon as I’ve posted this).

He talks about how in the film the Jon Favreau character cooks this dish for the Scarlett Johansson character and he says,

‘…. winding it round a big toasting fork and handing it to her in a little bowl, then watching her as she is totally seduced by the flavours. it is a moment of genius. The way she watches him making the spaghetti and then he watches her eat it … ‘

Such sensuality from the making and giving and receiving of the most beautiful, simplest food.

Can we ask for more from food, from anything really?

So go on then …. let’s make this.

The recipe is pretty much exactly from Giorgio Locatelli but the words here are mine.

Just four ingredients and a very different way of cooking to my usual way.

I’m usually stir frying things quickly over a high heat.

I need to use an oil with a high cooking temperature - like rapeseed or grapeseed. I need to hear things sizzle and to move them around quickly.

Not this langourous dish.

It takes its time. Well, it does just here at the start when we’re cooking that garlic to infuse the big fruity oil with the big garlic flavour before we heat them both together to form the base of the sauce.

So those four ingredients include the oil - it needs to be a virgin or extra virgin olive oil.

Usually I’d say these oils are for dressings as they cook and burn at a relatively low temperature.

But here we want that gorgeous rich fruity flavour.

And we want garlic, lots of it.

And chilli, lots of it. Scotch bonnet would be amazing and what’s recommended in the recipe - as it’s so fruity and delicious but I didn’t have any and so used bird eye.

You could also use dried chilli flakes which I have done since and have to admit I kind of prefer it - I use just about 1/2 a teaspoon as mine are really spicy!

So that’s three.

1. Olive oil

2. Garlic

3. Chillies

The fourth is the pasta itself.

Get a big pan on the heat with lots of water and a little salt - give it lots of room to breathe.

When boiling add the spaghetti and cook for ten minutes for it to be that perfect bite between al dente and soft (well, that’s what’s perfect for me).

While it’s cooking put a big non-stick pan over a low heat and add a tablespoon of the oil.

Tip in the garlic, stir for a few seconds, pull the pan away from the heat, stir and add a little more cold oil.

Return to the heat, stir into the warmth.

Just before it sizzles or starts to colour, pull the pan off the heat, stir, cool it down slightly.

Return to heat, stir and allow the oil to start to gently sizzle and the garlic to just just just just just turn colour.

Then add the chilli and cook, stirring, quickly and briefly.

Pull the pan away from the heat and add a ladleful of the pasta cooking water straight from that boiling pan to this - watch out because it might spit.

Return to the heat, turn the heat to the lowest setting and stir - keep it just there on the boil until the spaghetti has finished cooking.

Retain another ladle of the cooking water in case you need it, and drain the pasta then tip into the pan with the oil, garlic and chilli and toss thoroughly so it’s all coated.

Add a little more of the cooking water if needed.

And that is it. That simple.

You could add some lovely fresh parsley and grate in fresh parmesan - both of which would be absolutely delicious - but I had neither of these today so just had the very simplest way of eating this.

And I loved every silky full-flavoured mouthful of it.

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Cacio e pepe (spaghetti with cheese and pepper)

You know sometimes when you just keep seeing something you hadn’t noticed before and then you do and then you see it everywhere?

That’s been me and cacio e pepe over the last week or so.

I noticed it in two or three recipe books and immediately wanted to eat it, and wanted to make it.

It’s a dish or beautiful simplicity: pasta, pasta water, freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino and freshly grated black pepper. Sometimes butter too.

So I read more - I googled and read many more reviews and recipes online.

And actually it started sounding complicated! It started sounding like one of those things that is SO simple that’s it’s going to be hard to get it perfect.

I read more and more of the advice and tricks and ‘secrets’ … and then amalgamated all the bits of advice that sounded sensible to me and made my first one.

My first realisation is that no-one should have that fear that it has to be ‘perfect’ because really how wrong can you go with spaghetti and cheese and black pepper?!

It was delicious. However I wanted to make more of the cheese sauce as mine was a little thin.

I also wanted to simplify the method as I’d been swept along with these tips and tricks and so had used both olive oil and butter, a little too much pasta water and had taken the advice on board to let that mixture cool slightly before adding the cheese. Totally unnecessary, I now thought.

Second go I just followed the same basic method but omitted the oil, added less pasta water and didn’t wait before stirring in the cheese to make the sauce before adding the pasta.

Attempt number 1

Attempt number 2

Again; delicious!

But this time slightly too much and too cheesy a sauce.

I re-read the original recipe I’d seen from Giorgio Locatelli’s book ‘Made at Home’.

And I found the episode where Anthony Bourdain has it for the first time in Rome - and then it becomes his favourite pasta dish - and watched them make it in the restaurant.

SO much simpler than recipes I’d been reading online.

I discovered the classic version doesn’t even use butter … I haven’t tried that yet as I like the the butter! But I will.

For my third attempt I simplified even further and just went with what I’d now seen and what I feel would work - no more tricks and secrets; just cook the thing and do so with love and anticipation of a good meal.

No more even making the cheese sauce before adding the pasta.

No timing to cool one part before adding another or cooling the pasta slightly.

This is my favourite of the three I’ve made and definitely the simplest (not that any of them could really be called hard but oh goodness do some people like to complicate stuff - I found recipes for this online with PAGES of explanation!).

So, here’s how to make this utterly divine and nourishing and elegant and easy pasta.

If making more than a couple of portions at a time make sure you’ve got a big pan with lots of space for the pasta and the sauce to become one.

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To make a quick lunch or dinner for one, you’ll need:

a small handful of spaghetti (about 100g)

a knob of butter (maybe a couple of heaped teaspoons)

1/2 - 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

a small handful of freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese

more cheese and more pepper to serve, if liked (personally I didn’t think it needed it)

serve with a big green salad to make it more of a meal

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Usually with pasta we use a big saucepan and lots of water but for this dish use a little less water than normal because we want the pasta cooking water to be good and starchy to make the sauce. So I used a slightly smaller pan than usual and a little less water but a good big pinch of salt.

Bring to the boil, add the spaghetti and when it’s back on the boil cook for eight minutes.

Get everything else ready and a couple of minutes before the pasta’s ready get a good big non-stick pan over a medium heat and add a ladleful of water taken from the spaghetti pan.

Then add the butter and stir until it’s melted and the butter/water mixture simmering. Then heat to low and add the black pepper. Add a little more pasta water if needed - you want want it loose but not too much of it.

The pasta should be done by now but don’t ever worry!

If it’s not then turn the sauce off for a minute.

If it was done before you’d finished putting the pepper in then turn the sauce off for a minute while you drain the pasta. Nothing’s a problem.

If the pasta is going to wait for a minute though I’d run cold water through it after draining so it doesn’t get sticky as it waits patiently in its sieve.

OK so now we have a little simmering sauce and we just add the pasta maybe in two batches so each gets to expand into the sauce. Add the first then stir and combine with the sauce before adding the rest of the spaghetti.

Simmer the pasta in the sauce another minute or so so that it can absorb some more liquid and then add the finely grated cheese, tossing and mixing it all together so the cheese melts and you can’t even really see it any more.

That’s it. That’s it done.

Remove pasta and sauce from pan to dish, taste, add more pepper and cheese if liked.

Eat, wonder how something so simple can be so delicious and start planning when next to make it …

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