Lunch time - a simple pasta recipe

Over the last couple of years my love for cooking has expanded. I watch a lot of cooking shows and enjoy messing around in the kitchen. I am by no means a top quality chef - but cooking is fun for me and I love trying to make up new recipes. Most of the things that I make always follow a simple base and then I improvise from there.

Last night I went to a local food market and this woman was selling these delicious looking sausages. I decided to pick one up and make a pasta for lunch today. Below is the method that I followed. It's very basic and I'm not going to give specific measurements for anything because you can make the recipe according to your own tastes. This recipe is really easy and took me about 20 minutes to cook from start to finish, with about 10 minutes of that just waiting for things to cook.

So without further ado:

Serves 2.

1. Put a tsp of garlic and half an onion into a frying pan with some olive oil and fry on medium heat. Get a pot of boiling water going and decide what pasta you want to use.

2. After 5 minutes add some wine and let it simmer away. You want to reduce the wine because it intensifies the flavour.

3. Once the wine has reduced to the point where it is almost becoming sticky then you can add some form of pasta tomato sauce - the choice is up to you. If it is too thick add some water.

4. By now the pot of water should be boiling, so you can add some salt to the water and your pasta.

5. Taste the sauce. Add salt, pepper, sage and sweet basil accordingly. Easy on the herbs though because they can quickly overpower the meal.

6. Almost ready! Now you just want to fine tune your sauce. If you think you need more sauce, add more tomato pasta sauce. If the sauce needs to be thinned out, add water.

7. Check you pasta - it should be about ready. Grab a colander and drain it when it's ready. Once it's drained, stick it back into the original pot and add some olive oil. Mix it up nicely - this will help the pasta not to stick together.

TIP: When I am pouring the hot water off the pasta, I stack the pasta bowls in the sink and put the colander on top of them. As you pour the water, it runs down over the bowls and warms them up. By the time your pasta is ready - your bowls are nice and hot. Them just stick them onto a dinner plate (like the last picture) so that you can carry them around easily.

8. Serve your pasta and sauce and chop some basil to throw over the top.

I hope that you manage to recreate this without too much difficulty!

Enjoy.

Peas & Tomatoes - an update on my aquaponics system

When I first started my aquaponics system about 2 months ago, I added some new pea plants and added an  almost dead tomato plant from the soil garden in the hopes that it might be saved. Having never planted peas or tomatoes before I was very excited to see the outcome.

My 2 little tomatoes!

At first the tomato tree had only 2 leaves on it and was really not looking good. It had not done well at all and had never produced a fruit while it was in the soil garden. Once in the aquaponics system it started to develop leaves and then flowers. After checking today it has 2 tomatoes that have started growing and there are more to come! It's really exciting for me to be able to say that I have grown my own tomatoes. You can see by the pictures that they are very small, but they will hopefully develop into some lovely fruits. I know that it is very late in the season for tomatoes and it's more than likely that they won't ripen on the vine, but that just means that I will have to ripen them inside. I'll write about that when I get to it.

Great looking peas :)

The peas have not looked back since day 1. They have shot up and kept growing and growing. They started to develop flowers about 2 weeks ago and then little pea pods started to shoot up. They're now growing into awesome sized peas. I am really excited to be able to harvest some when they're a bit bigger. I hear that peas start to decrease in their sugar content the moment you pick them from the vine (as with most plant I would imagine) so I am looking forward to eating them right after they have been picked.

Soil bed doing well.

Beetroot in the making

In my soil garden the cauliflower and broccoli are starting to look great. They're still very small, but it looks like they are past their most vulnerable stage. I have also planted some kale, Chinese cabbage and Cape Spitz (a.k.a sugar loaf) cabbage. While those vegetables get settled I have started some beetroot to experiment with over the winter - and those are also starting to look good. I hope to put them into the ground within the next 2 weeks.

I want to write another post soon on how to start plants from seed - because I feel that not a lot of people realise how easy it really can be. So if you think it's something that would interest you - then have a look back in a couple of days.