I Heart Pasta

I love pasta, it's one of my favourite foods. Firstly because it's a carb and carbs = good. Secondly because it's quick and thirdly because it's just bloody delicious. I've been really lazy food wise recently, so to celebrate my laziness here are a few of my favourite quick, easy and tasty pasta recipes...

Pasta Arrabiata

• 1 carton of creamed tomatoes (passata)
• 1-2 red chillies, chopped finely
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 200ml veggie stock
• salt and pepper
• Fry Light/Olive oil
• Enough pasta for 4

1. Oil and heat up a pan. Chuck in the onion, garlic and chilli and fry until soft (4-5 minutes)
2. Add the veggie stock, creamed tomatoes, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil.
3. Simmer the sauce for 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, cook the pasta and any other veggies you might want with it. When the pasta is done, stir in the sauce and serve!

I stirred in grilled mushrooms and chopped up sausage with mine. It was NOM. I apologise for the crappy photo, I was hungry, it was steaming and I got impatient.

Jammy Pasta

This recipe is called Jammy Pasta because the sauce goes really thick, sweet and jam like. It's awesome!

• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 2-3 tsp sweetener/brown sugar
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• Fry Light/Oil
• Pasta

1. Heat a pan up with fry light or oil. Chuck in the onion and garlic and fry for 5 minutes or so.
2. Add sweetener/sugar to the onions and continue until the onions begin to caramelize.
3. Splash in the balsamic vinegar, heat through for a few minutes before adding the chopped tomatoes.
4. Simmer for 20-25 minutes before stirring into cooked pasta.

Serves 2

I have to confess that this does taste better when using real sugar, but for now sweetener will do. I topped mine with one of Redwoods new cheezly flavours, Pepperjack style. It probably would have been better if I'd chucked it in the oven to melt for a bit, but like I say, these are pasta recipes for the lazy.

The new cheezly was pretty nice but I'll do a wee review of that later this week, I have loads of new products I've tried that I want to blog about.

Wild Rice and Mushroom Casserole

I had a bit of a 'crazy moment' whilst shopping today. When I say crazy I mean I bought a few things that weren't on my list. This is a big thing for me, my shopping lists are very precise. I used to write them before ordering Asda deliveries online, I am list mad. I have it all laid out in specific sections and everything, with vegetables at the top and frozen stuff at the bottom...but nevermind! That isn't important right now.

The first impulse buy was mushrooms. Classy mushrooms. And by classy I mean 'not the muddy, Sainsburys basics massive pack' but portobello mushrooms on deal, and closed cup chestnut mushrooms reduced. I got a bit excited. I bought 3 packs. I cannot explain what made me put the wild rice in my trolley. It felt like my hand said yes but my head said no...99p for a tiny pack, what was I doing?!

So here I was, sat at home with 950g of mushrooms that were due to rot at any moment and a pack of wild rice that I was suddenly getting a craving for. What is a poor, lazy vegan to do?

Wild Rice and Mushroom Casserole apparently...Here it is:

• 400g mushrooms, sliced thickly (any kind, the basics ones will do. If you want to be REALLY classy you could chuck some shiitake in there)
• 1 cup of wild rice
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2-3 tsp minced garlic
• 2 cups of stock and 1 cup of soy milk (3 cups of stock would be fine, I just wanted some creamyness and needed my Healthy A for the day)
• Salt

1. Preheat the oven to 160C
2. Chop everything up quickly. Chuck it all in a casserole dish and cover with foil.
3. Cook for an hour and a half, stirring halfway through to check on it.

Easy or what? It was really delicious as well, tasted far better than I imagined and with zero effort. Win!

I had mine with some mash (OMG MORE CARBS!) and Fry's Sausages. If you have it with something else there's about four portions there, otherwise it does two - three.

Chocolate Rice Pudding

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've decided to knit most of my Christmas presents this year and it's been keeping me really busy. I start work next week though (yay I'm employed, wooo, money!! WIN! etc etc) and I want to make the most of my freedom and get some good cooking done.

As everyone in the UK knows, it's been snowing a lot. I've been stuck in the flat for the last few days and I just cannot stop eating. I dunno what it is about this weather but it's turned me into some kind of binge eating beast. I had a baaad day food wise yesterday and wanted to cut down on my syns today. I also fancied chocolate. So this how I ended up making todays marvellous recipe.

Chocolate Rice Pudding

• 3 tbsp cocoa powder (9 syns)
• 1 litre soy milk (Healthy Extra A)
• 50g sweetener (or 100g sugar if you want the full fat version)
• 125g pudding rice
• splash of vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 150C. Grab a large mixing bowl and put the cocoa powder in there with 4 tbsp of boiling water. Whisk.
2. Gradually add the soy milk and whisk it up some more
3. Add the vanilla and sweetener/sugar....whisk
4. Add the rice...and you got it. Whisk whisk whisk.
5. Pour the mixture into a greased oven proof dish (I sprayed some fry light into mine so I didn't have to syn any butter/oil)
6. Bake in the oven for 1 hour 45 minutes, stirring every 15-20 minutes to stop the skin that forms on top from burning.

So the recipe for this is supposed to serve 4, but they are 4 massive portions. I had the full portion though, it was bloody laaavely and I couldn't help myself. The full portion gave me 1 healthy A extra and was 2.25 syns. I added a strawberry soy yogurt to it (another 2 syns) and it was really good. That was just me being a bit of an obscene greedy cow though. OBSCENE.

Anyway, enjoy!