One Pot Pasta With Broccoli, Olives, Mascarpone and Lemon

I think I’m just gonna go ahead and marry myself.

140g dried wholemeal penne
200g young broccoli with its young leaves, cut into small florets
some kalamata olives
juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp basil pesto
3 tbsp light mascarpone (left over from that amazing cheesecake I made)
½ small bunch parsley, torn

Cook the pasta following pack instructions, adding the broccoli 4 mins before the end of the cooking time.

Reserve a cup of the water, then drain everything and tip back into the pot.

Add all remaining ingredients to the pot + enough of the pasta water to create a creamy sauce. Season with a good grinding of black pepper and a little sea salt.

Makes for two.

Italian Pasta in Japan

Basically, the Japanese LOVE noodles. Like, more than NZers love alcohol or bacon or Iranians love kebabs or rice. Though probably even more. Cause they have noodle festivals! Entire festivals dedicated to noodles! Noodles of several kinds but mostly there are 4; ramen (the thin and yellow fast-food Chinese noodle), soba (the healthy brown one made of buckwheat flour), udon (round and thick like moi) and somen (supermodel thin like moi in the future). Which are eaten hot, cold, on their own with dipping sauce, in a soup, in a stir fry and even as a patty in a burger bun! So you’d think after a life-time of living and breathing mamas home cooked Japanese noodles, they’d venture out when it came to dining at Bona Petito… No. What do they order? What SOLE pasta CAN they order? You got it, SPAGHETTI.

It’s funny, even their supermarkets, only sell spaghetti in their Italian/pasta isle. To be fair, on the odd chance, I might see shells or bow-ties, though I’m sure it’s not the Japanese buying those. As for all of the other good pastas; fettuccine, ravioli, tortellini, gnocchi etc they are only usually found in international import stores. Oh and when it comes to lasagne sheets, only the tiny square sized ones are sold because Japanese don’t have full-sized ovens in their homes.

So you go to an Italian restaurant and the only sort of pasta you can order is spaghetti.Which is fine… only a firstworldproblem and all but like, they’ll have packets of tagliatelle displayed around the restaurant for fun or as decoration to tempt you but they don’t actually serve that, no. Or any other pasta for that matter. Just spag. Just more fu&king noodles. #myjapanlife

5 Minute 5 Ingredient Vegan Mushroom Soba Pasta

If you, like me, like pasta, you should be eating soba! What is soba? Soba are Japanese noodles made of buckwheat flour. What’s the big deal about them? They’re low cal! Basically, half the calories of white pasta. A cup of cooked soba contains 113 calories whereas white spaghetti contains 220 per cup and wholewheat spaghetti 174.

113 < 220
113 < 174

You get it right?

For all you non-Japan dwellers, you should be able to find soba in the health or Asian section of your local supermarket. For Cantabrians, Piko, Liberty Market and New World.

Tonight I made this and WOW it was good. If I can say so myself.. which I can because this is my blog mwahaha. Anyways… I know a lot of people don’t like shiitake mushrooms so if you’re one of them you can use regular mushrooms or another vegetable all together (corn, broccoli or chickpeas are my recommendations).

1/2 packet of soba (or more or less whatever)
1/2 onion, diced small
1 punnet of shiitake mushrooms, chopped medium
1/2 can of whole peeled Italian tomatoes
spices (I’m cheating, I combined all the spices to make the recipe “5 ingredients” hehe but in my defense, it’s just a pinch of salt, red chilli and black pepper.)

Cook soba as per packet instructions, usually about a mere TWO minutes in boiling water – another reason why it’s so much better than pasta! It’s fasta! Get it? lol

Fry onion on medium heat with a little oil in a pan (1 minute)

Add mushrooms, stir (another min)

Add everything else, tomatoes, spices and cooked soba, stir.

Serve when all hot and steamy.

Oh mama mia! Oishi desu yo!

Lunch with a view (review I’ve lost count)

Turns out Mimasaka ain’t as shit as what I initially thought. Apparently, good old Confucius was right: everything has beauty, but not everyone can see it or something like that. For up in the mountains in Yunogo, there is a little gem of a restaurant called Yukuru Terrace and it’s B.E.A.utiful.

Yukuru terrace is where I’d take my mama (if my mama were in Japan) for lunch. You know what I mean? It’s one of those places. Lunch with a view, free-wifi (if she starts giving you a lecture), an abundance of artsy magazines (probably for the same reason), hot sun shining through the large glass windows and slow slow relaxing (yukkuru) ambiance.

But before you start punching the address in your GPS, there’s a few things left to mention. According to my Japanese friend, they only serve 15 meals per day. After that, it’s only coffee and cake. So, if you want to have one of the two lunch options on offer, you should probably go as early as you can – they open at 11.

Both choices are 1400 yen with an option of adding a tea/coffee and cake for an extra 300.

Of course, we did that because it takes insane self-control to turn down cake and overall, everything was great.

For 1700 we were given a garden salad, sweet potato soup, octopus spaghetti, bread roll, coffee and a slice of apple ricotta cake fit for an anorexic caterpillar – you know, the usual Japanese standard.

Vegan Wholewheat Spaghetti

1 yellow onion (diced, small)
olive oil
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 can/jar of organic all-natural pasta sauce
1 punnet of mushrooms (diced or as is)
1 small thingy of broccoli (sliced to individual pieces)
1 large ripe tomato (diced, small)
1/2 packet of organic wholewheat spaghetti (or soba!)
salt and chilli pepper

So easy, hardly a recipe at all…
1.fry onion with a little olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat until golden.

2.add the tomato paste to the onion and fry for an additional minute – this is my mama’s secret tip and what gives her food it’s vibrant colour

3.add the entire contents of the pasta sauce followed by the remaining vegetables to the pan (mushroom, broccoli and tomato) then turn down the heat and let simmer.

4.While  the sauce simmers, boil the spaghetti as per packet instructions.

Drain, rinse and add spaghetti to sauce mixture then season to taste.

Cook for an additional 5 or so minutes then nomnomnom with loved ones or as I did, in the beautiful company of yourself.

For The Love Of Spaghetti

Working in an Italian restaurant requires some serious self-control. Honestly, I want to eat everything. Don’t take that lightly, by everything, I mean everything (parmesan shakers and pizza boards included). No, I am not insane, I’m simply drunk on the intoxicating fragrance that is cooked PASTA. But, of all the pastas, my absolute favourite (and the one my entire being lusts after) is spaghetti.

Spaghetti is my rock. Spaghetti is romantic (I’m referring to Lady and the Tramp styles) it’s fun to eat (slurrrrp), it doesn’t take too long to prepare and it more than satisfies my tumtum. What I’m trying to say is, if I only had time to save one pantry item during a zombie apocalypse, it’d be spaghetti. This morning I woke up with spaghetti on my mind (naturally) and I felt it’d only be fair if you joined my delirious cravings also. So, here’s a short (yet powerful) collection of four spaghetti quotes that’ll have you cancelling your current evening plans in order to make an impromptu reservation at your local Italian restaurant. Buon Appetito!

“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”-Sophia Loren

“No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.” -Christopher Morley

“Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.” -Sophia Loren

“I like my spaghetti like I like my women. All over my shirt.” ― Jarod Kintz

“Over and over again…”

“Pasta with melted cheese is the one thing I could eat over and over again.” -Yotam Ottolenghi

Linguine Melanzane
Tomato, garlic, crispy eggplant and basil tossed in a tomato and
herb napoletana sauce. Topped with Clevedon Valley buffalo mozzarella.

#workperks

Pasta, I love you.

I thoroughly enjoy vegefying classic meat dishes because a) I like getting creative and b) I can consume twice as much with half the guilt!

My vegan vege spaghetti is the shizz! Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself:

1 packet of soy spaghetti or wholegrain spaghetti 

1 red onion (finely chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
1 jar of organic pasta sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
pinch of ginger
pinch of onion powder
pinch of dried oregano
pinch of paprika
salt and pepper

2 tomatoes

10 button mushrooms (quartered)
1 can of all natural black beans (drained and rinsed)
a bunch of asparagus (chopped medium)
2 cups of raw cauliflower (chopped medium)
fresh basil (finely chopped)

Cook the spaghetti as per packet instructions, rinse under colder water and set aside.

In a frying pan gently fry the onion and garlic until transparent.

Turn the heat down, add the pasta sauce, soy sauce, ginger, onion powder, oregano, paprika, salt and pepper.

Grate two tomatoes into the sauce and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Add the vegetables and cook for another 5 or so minutes (I like my vegetables crunchy so I don’t cook them for long)

Rinse the cooked spaghetti one more time and add it to the vegetable sauce.

Mix it all up, cook for a further minute then nom nom!