Couple of pasta recipes for your delectation - enjoy ;)

Following on from an ancient blog about feeding three people for £53 a week in which the recipes were well received, I thought I'd share another couple of Italian recipes for you to try.

Cheap and quick but also very good, and simple to make. Here ya go:

Spagetti con tonno

This takes about ten minutes to cook, start to finish but is a meal with amazing favour and depth.

Put a medium pan of water on to boil, add a little salt and a few drops of olive oil, cook about 120 grams of spagetti per person - about 8 minutes will be just cooked, don't cook for longer.

 Meanwhile open a tin of anchovies, pour the oil into another smaller pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Chop half the contents of the anchovy tin (and save the rest). Crush and then chop three cloves of garlic and add the anchovies and garlic together with a tea-spoon of chili flakes (sounds like quite a lot of chili but pasta reduces the heat of chili - trust me on this) to the hot oil and cook for a maximum of two minutes.

Drain the pasta but not too well (i.e. retain a bit of the starchy water) and add this to the garlic, anchovy & chili mix. Turn the heat down and add a small tin of drained tuna (or sardines if you prefer/have in the cupboard), half a jar of green pesto (red is fine too for this meal) and a heaped tablespoon of drained capers. Mix, allow to heat through (couple of minutes max) and serve with a good twist of black pepper and some grated Parmesan cheese on the top.

A glass of red and a fork only. Enjoy. It's fab. If you don't have the chili flakes or anchovies or capers it's still quite good, but I wouldn't bother. With them it's great.

Second is a really easy lasagna. I tend not to bother using minced beef in anything these days and think lasagna is much better without it to be honest. This is vegetarian, quick, easy and simple. Also very cheap and really tasty.

Simply thaw a bag of frozen spinach (the frozen stuff which comes in clumps or discs rather than recognisable leaves) drain and mix with a small carton of soft cheese with garlic and herbs (72p from Aldi). Arrange a layer of lasagna sheets over the bottom of your lasagna dish, add half the spinach and cheese mixture, add another layer of lasagna sheets and the rest of the mix on top. A final layer of lasagna topped with a tin of chopped tomatoes (27p at Aldi) and a small carton of passata (31p). Spread this out and top with grated cheddar cheese. You could top this all with some slices of tomato if you like but not essential.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

Serve with a twist of black pepper and a side salad. You'll get six meals out of this.

Great for week-nights, not too heavy but satisfying. And costs about £3 in total!

Enjoy. And thanks for reading.