Easy Peasy Pasta Recipe!

Sometimes you just need some good old comfort food, that's easy to make and doesn't matter what your budget is! This is my super easy pasta recipe that I make whenever I feel I need something a bit more 'substantial'. You can pretty much add anything to it, I rarely eat meat but this works well with white fish, prawns and chicken, and also tastes amazing with pretty much any veg added to it. Once you try it you'll be able to adapt the recipe to suit you!

Ingredients:

-  200g Pasta (this recipe makes 2-3 good portions, you need 75-100g of pasta per person)

- Can of condensed mushroom soup (Also works well with chicken, I personally prefer the brand Campbells to others that I've tried, if you increase the amount of people this recipe is for you need more than one can) 

- A good handful of Mushrooms washed and chopped

- 2 Cloves of Garlic

-3 good sized green/spring onions

- 1 can of sweetcorn (you can also use frozen or peas add them to the dish frozen they will thaw with the heat of the pan) 

- 1 oxo cube (I used chicken but you can also use vegetable)

- 2 tsp of dried tarragon

- Milk (this will depend on what consistency you want your sauce)

- Olive Oil

- Salt and Pepper to taste

- Grated Cheddar Cheese (optional) 

Method:

1. Cook your pasta according to the packet instructions, once cooked drain in a colander and set one side, rinse the pan so that you can then use it to cook the sauce in. 

2. Fry the Garlic and onions in some olive oil, you need to watch as garlic can burn easily, then add the sweetcorn and mushrooms and allow to sweat down.

3. Add the can of condensed soup and stir well, you then want to add the milk, the more milk you add the runnier your sauce will become this is down to preference, I normally pour the milk into the condensed soup can, measuring about 1-2 cans of milk.

3. Add the stock cube this helps the sauce taste less 'soupy', then add the tarragon and stir well, allow to simmer for a minute or two then add the pasta from earlier to the pan.

4. Stir well to ensure the sauce is evenly distributed, you can serve the pasta like this, or you can place into single serving dishes or one large casserole dish and grate cheese over the top, place in the oven for around 15-20 mins and allow the cheese to bubble. Another nice alternative is using breadcrumbs, which make a nice crisp topping. 

5. Serve as a main with salad or veg, or as a side dish.

 I'm almost positive you will love this as much as I do!

Thanks for reading!

Hannah -ox

Spicy Pumpkin Soup Recipe!

If you follow me on instagram you may have seen me post this picture of some vegetables I had bought from a road side seller local to where my Dad lives, all the produce was locally grown and organic. I bought all the veg for £10 and was pleased as punch, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it and that was make soup! As you know I'm trying to lose a bit more weight and soup is a great alternative to salads during the cold months. 

So today I thought I'd share my spicy pumpkin soup recipe with you! I love soups and they're so easy to make, Pumpkin will soon be out of season so I wanted to get this post in before it's too late!

I made this recipe up as I went along, I make soups a lot so I was quite confident it would turn out ok! 

Ingredients:

Olive oil

1 medium-large pumpkin (you want to remove all the seeds and the loose flesh and put to one side you want to use the hard flesh with the skin removed chop into small chunks this is probably the mos time consuming part)

1 large white onion (chopped up) 

1 large leek (chopped up) 

2 cloves of garlic ( roughly chopped) 

1-1.5 litres of vegetable or chicken stock (this will depend on how thick you want your soup to be)

1 Chilli (deseeded and chopped up) 

1 small dried chilli (crushed -this is optional you could also add some dried chilli flakes instead adjust the amount to your preferred spice level)

2 tsp of ground coriander

2 tsp of ground cumin

1 tsp of garlic salt

Salt & Pepper to taste

1. Once you've prepared all your veg (I always do this whenever I cook and put them in separate bowls this way nothing gets ruined because your still prepping mid cook), take a large pan probably one of the largest you own this recipe makes a lot of soup. Add a good glug of olive oil to the pan and put over a medium heat, add the onion, leek, garlic and both chilli's to a pan and soften everything, you want to keep your eye on this and keep stirring or you'll end up with burnt garlic or onions. 

2. Once the onions and leeks start to turn translucent you want to add the coriander, cumin and garlic salt, and stir well coating everything in the spice. Then add the pumpkin chunks, try to get everything mixed together (this can be difficult depending on the size of your pan) allow to sweat for a couple of minutes.

3. Boil the kettle and add a couple of stock pots to a jug (these are available in most supermarkets and are a concentrated jelly of stock that you melt in hot water) add the water between 1-1.5 litres and allow the stock pots to melt. You can use chicken or veg stock I generally use veg stock for soups just because I prefer the taste.

4. Pour the stock into the pan carefully you want to ensure that all the pumpkin and other ingredients are covered if you don't have enough stock just add some plain water. I then add salt and pepper and give it a good stir to ensure nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pan, bring the pan to the boil and then turn down to simmering, cover the pan with a lid and allow a little gap for steam, you want to simmer this for around 20-40 minutes you are aiming for the pumpkin to be really quite soft, you should be able to get a skewer through it. 

5. Once the pumpkin is cooked you want to blend the mixture either in a blender, or with a hand blender, until nice and smooth.

6. Too serve I used the pumpkin seeds which I saved earlier, all I did was wash them and lay them on a baking tray, add a bit of garlic salt and cayenne pepper bake in the oven for 10-20 mins and you have a healthy alternative to croutons!

If you allow this to cool you can either store it in the fridge or freeze it and reheat when needed. It should keep for a good 5 days in the fridge though.

As you may have noticed I didn't do a food diary post for this week but I have lost 2lbs! :-) 

Thanks for reading guys!

Hannah -ox