Quick Pasta

Basic Pasta with Tomato

This is the standby of choice for most family cooks. Unfortunately, Italians combine tomatoes, onions and garlic that has been fried in oil. 'George-friendly' cooks cannot do this. Even so pasta dishes are a good resource, especially for the family cook. When you arrive home and no meal has been planned, you can produce pasta in a tomato sauce with very little trouble. Alternatively use a pesto (see recipes below).

The tomato sauce for pasta can also be used to spread over a pizza base. If you keep these frozen it is easy to make a quick meal by grilling a pizza with topping of your choice. Pasta sauces can also be used with rice, polenta, couscous and beans. I will explain how this is done shortly. First, we must find a way of cooking the Italian tomato-based sauces without frying the onions, garlic and tomato. 

Here is a quick ‘George friendly’ way of getting a similar result:

Peel and slice 4 tomatoes (tinned tomatoes do not work well). Chop 1 onion and mix–in some pressed/chopped garlic. (This will be the basic sauce when it is steamed and mixed with olive oil). To steam, put the sliced tomatoes in a steaming bowl with the onion and garlic placed on top of them. This is the foundation sauce to which we can add.  

An alternative method for preparing the sauce is to bake the tomato mix slowly (190C for 2-4 hours). Olive oil can be added after it has cooled. You can achieve the same result in a rice cooker.  You can add a little wine vinegar to give a tang. 

Once you have the foundation sauce it is easy to prepare a pasta meal. Here are some suggestions: 

I sometimes add a few chopped olives to the basic sauce mix but be careful not to use too many. (This may not be an option you want to follow.) While this is steaming you can prepare mushrooms by rinsing and chopping into quarters (most people remove the stems as they are tough). If you do not have mushrooms in the fridge use zucchini, just slice them in half and chop into bite-size pieces. Open two tins of chunky tuna. Pour the water off. I do this by squeezing the lid of the tin against the fish. Add mushrooms/zucchini with the tuna to the steaming tomato sauce mix. The mushrooms and fish need to steam for half the time that the tomatoes, onions and olives require.

Prepare pasta in the normal way, boiling in water. When the pasta is soft, drain it and place in a serving bowl. I usually add a very little olive oil to the pasta at this stage. Pour the tomato-fish-mushroom mix onto the pasta and add some more olive oil but not too much. Garnish with a little fresh parley if you have it handy.

If you don’t have either zucchini or mushrooms leave the vegetables out of the recipe. 

You can serve this pasta dish with a salad or some asparagus. Otherwise, just serve it on its own.

The basic tomato pasta sauce can be easily altered in other ways. For example, if you have some prawns these can replace the tuna. Green prawns need to steam for longer. They can be eaten when they turn pink. Pink prawns are ready to eat and only need heating. Alternatively you can add chilli to the tomato and just use this as the base. Chillies also go very well with prawns. The tomato sauce is delicious with a little basil added. If basil is added the sauce can be used on its own.

Remember that what you do with pasta can be adapted to serve with rice, beans or couscous. All liquid Italian pasta sauces can be used with polenta. 

This is how I adapt the basic tomato pasta dish using rice. I follow the recipe for steaming the tomato and fish, as explained above. (I use my rice cooker with the steaming basket above it, so that some of the steaming sauce drips into the rice as it cooks. Because the rice takes some time to cook, it may be necessary to take the steaming tomatoes off the steam for part of the time – judgment is required because you do not want the tomatoes to be too soft.) When the tomato sauce is cooked, I mix it with olive oil and then spoon it into the rice and serve the enhanced rice as a risotto garnished with parsley. It works.