Pasta Sauce

Famous_Séamus

Hi All,
I eat a lot of pasta dishes, ya know the ones where you stir a sauce into your cooked pasta. Its kinda expensive and probably not very healthy so I was wondering if anyone has any good, healthy homemade pasta-sauce recipes. There's obviusly loads on the internet but I dont want to have to trudge through them all untill I find a suitable one. Thanks!

Attol

Just for a simple lazy tomato one get chopped tomatoes, drain the juice, tomato puree, garlic, whatever herbs you want and heat them on the hob. Throw in whatever veg or cooked meat you want and voila!

The Sweeper

The cheap end:

tin of chopped tomatoes
two cloves of garlic
one teaspoon of dried oregano
handful of fresh chopped basil leaves
one tablespoon of tomato puree
two teaspoons of the darkest, least refined brown cane sugar you can find
splash of oliver oil

Sweat off garlic in oil, then add tomatoes, oregano and basil. Allow to reduce on a medium heat for 15 minutes, and half way through add the tomato puree and stir through the sugar. Taste at the end of reduction for flavour. Boil pasta of choice in the mean time. Drain pasta. Stir plenty of cracked black pepper through the sauce, stir sauce through the cooked pasta.

I recently discovered that purist Italians, when making tomato sauce, will go for either an onion based sauce or a garlic flavoured sauce, but not both. I tried it myself, and I could really see a difference. I find that now I use onions if I'm making a long, slow simmering sauce with something meaty and I use only garlic if I'm throwing together a quick sauce, or a sauce with something fragile that I don't want overpowered (especially seafood).

I may add garlic to the onion based sauces, but I'll crush and chop one or two cloves and add five minutes before serving so the flavour comes through.

To make the quick sauces more interesting, try the following variants:

To the cheap end sauce, add chopped fresh chili to taste, with sliced black olives and capers.

Sweat off some chopped streaky bacon and thin sliced mushrooms in a pan, then add the garlic and go on to make up the rest of the cheap end sauce.

Make up the cheap end sauce and add a tin's worth of drained, flaked tuna and some capers or some chopped black olives

In a dry pan, seal some wafer-thin strips of good beef steak. Set aside. Make up the cheap end sauce with some chili and allow to reduce. Add the medium-rare beef strips just before the end of cooking (so they don't toughen) - include any juices from the beef. Try adding a splash of red wine or some worcestershire sauce (just a splash) to this one. You can also add some thin sliced mushrooms etc.

For some of the more 'dramatic recipes' - ones that take more work - I'd make up a pasta sauce on a similar basis to the cheap style one, but using onions, tinned tomatoes, a splash of beef stock, red wine or port, cane sugar, basil, oregano, possibly some smoked paprika if I'm making meatballs, and various other spices or seasonings.

I also find that thick pork dinner sausages - the British-style ones like pork and apple, or pork and sage - work surprisingly well in a pasta sauce. Seal and brown them in some oil at the beginning of cooking. Set them to one side, and in the same oil start sweating off the onions. Chop the sausages into bite-sized pieces and add them with any juices when the sauce has all the ingredients in and cook through.

Personally, I hate chicken in tomato sauces, so I never cook it.

olaola

An easy & quick one -

Fry a few chopped smoky rashers (I like hickory from Denny)
put in some garlic too.
Then when the pasta is cooked, throw it in on top of the rashers,
add some basil, creme fraiche and a lump of grated parmesan or grana padano.
I would also squeeze some lemon in too - adds a nice freshness.

To make it low fat - I would trim the rashers and cook them dry in a non-stick pan with the lid on.
Let them liberate some of their own fat before you add the garlic.
And then use low-fat creme fraiche. Even mixing that half and half with
no-fat fromage frais if you want to be super-good

Ballyman

Simple instructions.

Put the following into a sauce pan and simmer for 45 minutes. It will feed 2-3.

One tin of chopped tomatoes.
Table spoon of Olive Oil
Dash of worcestershire sauce
Splash of red wine
One chilli pepper, chopped. (leave out if you dont like heat)
Two bell peppers, chopped.
One large red onion, chopped.
Couple of cloves of garlic, chopped.
6 medium Mushrooms, chopped.
300 grams of browned mince (or whatever meat you want)
Pinch of Oregano
Pinch of Basil
Pinch of Salt
Large pinch of fresh ground pepper.

I usually add a heaped tea spoon of flour about 5 minutes before finish to thicken the sauce up a little. I presume this is what the puree is for mentioned above. I would imagine either would do.

Sín sín.

Minder

I used to buy Tesco Pasta Chicken Alfredo ready meals for lunch at work, but it is quite an expensive meal. So I read the ingredients on the packet and now buy the basics to make it myself. I can enjoy all the flavours without the additional salt, E-numbers, colours etc.

Pasta chicken alfredo - pieces of spicy chicken in a creamy sauce with spinach, mushrooms and fuisili pasts.

Ingredients

Chicken breasts
Piri piri spice (Schwartz) dry
Half an onion
Garlic
Mushrooms
Spinach
Splash of white wine
Cream
Fuisili pasta
Parmaesan cheese

Place chicken breasts on a baking tray and sprinkle with piri piri spice
Cook in the oven for approx 20 mins at 200 degrees
Slice and cook mushrooms in a non stick frying pan - set aside
Cook spinach in the same pan - don't add any water.
Spinach is cooked when all the leaves have wilted - squeeze between two plates to remove excess water, then slice.
Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water
Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft
Turn up the heat and add the white wine
Once the wine has cooked down a little add the cream
Drain the pasta and add the cooked mushrooms and spinach
Slice the chicken and add to the pasta
Then add the cream sauce.
The sauce should be enough to coat everything - if not, add more cream.
The sauce will be a little thin - now add some finely grated parmaesan to thicken the sauce.

Piri piri is chilli based - so use according to taste.

Famous_Séamus

Thanks everyone. Some of them seem quite abstract, Im sure they taste great though! I was kinda looking for something quick. If I did make a big batch of one of these do you think they'd freeze well. Obviously not in some of cases.

loismustdie

this may or may not be a decent answer but just in case... the jar of pasta sauce you normally use, most people i know but the whole jar on one serving, for something quick and healthy enough...
use brown penn pasta (don't overcook or it will become too starchym ie too fattening!
only usy a tablespoon of sauce per serving, this is enough! try the roma bolegnese sauce, it's good and keeps for ages
add cherry tomatoes to pot of pasta and sauce
sprinkle with smaill amount of grated cheese

you should get about 8 servings from a jar, that's being generous so is no longer too dear! replace cherry with plum tomatoes if you've never tried them before, they're yum!!!