Cooking: Cheats Pasta (Jamie Oliver)

I found this recipe a little over a year ago and I can't get enough of it. I love this pasta sauce. It is so easy to make. I always make extra because I like to have leftovers so I don't follow the exact ingredient measurement list. This heats up great in the microwave at work. I keep everything the same (ingredient wise) as he does in his recipe. Although, if I am out of lasagna I just use regular old spaghetti.

I cut up a bunch of garlic (I looooove the smell of garlic so I really do not mind spending forever peeling them) and red chili and basil. As I am cutting those items up I cook the tomato sauce. I find it tastes better and is not as runny when I cook the sauce, without the other ingredients, for about 20min. I also add some pepper (as much as you like).

garlic: about 3-4 bulbs
red chili: 4
basil: a big bunch of leaves

garlic

The sauce

I also take a potato masher to the tomato sauce to smooth out some of the bigger chunks of tomato, but that is a personal preference.

Once the garlic and chili peppers are cut up I fry them in the frying pan until the garlic looks mostly cooked (about 5 minutes or so on high heat) I then put the basil in the frying pan and stir it in for less than 30 seconds.

Garlic, Red Chili, Basil

I then put everything into the tomato sauce, turn the heat down to low and cook it for the length it takes me to cook the pasta (6-10min)

Sauce with the extra ingredients

Once the pasta is cooked, the sauce gets turned off and dinner is served! I add Parmesan and sometimes have some garlic bread with it.

I like cheese!

I love making this meal. I find it a light meal and I know exactly what I put in it. In Jamie Olivers recipe he adds salt here and there but I only put pepper in the sauce. I find that there is enough salt in the canned tomatoes to more than make up for the salt the recipe says I should add. But I also don't like salt except on popcorn on fries (if not presalted).

You should try this recipe out. I have tried a few others from his site and so far they all turned out great :)



I still don't have the hang of writing cooking posts, I know my descriptions on how I cook the meal kinda really suck. Hopefully the more cooking posts I do the better I get!