Please give me your best pasta recipes. Bored of boring bolognese etc

[MarthaBerry]

i recently had a delicious pasta badged as “roast veg rigatoni “ at a restaurant and it was so so delicious. Rich, salty, herby. Just marvellous but my pasta attempts always feel lacking. What’s the secret of restaurant pasta (meat free for me) and has anyone got any recipes they make and recommend ? I’ve mastered a good tomato and basil but craving more interesting ones. I love all veg, artichokes, capers but need rock solid tried and tested ! Thank you. Hopefully this is a nice friendly Saturday thread that’ll give me something to cook later

When you make this do you use tinned or fresh tomatoes?

@SM33 always tinned. Works brilliantly.

Roast some cherry tomatoes with salt and pepper and oil. Mix with pasta, ricotta and lots of basil.

i also like chicken, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes.

I make this and wilt spinach leaves into it - that’s very good too

@OP do you eat fish? Anchovies, sardines, smoked mackerel, salmon, prawns, crab - they all work brilliantly with pasta. They also don’t need heavy creamy sauces, or tomatoes, so they taste fresh and different from bolognese/carbonara.

The Gousto 3 cheese pasta bake is delicious

I'll try that. Thank you x

My family love a dish I call green pasta.

The sauce is just a pack of spinach (and sometimes kale) wilted down then blended until smooth. That goes back into the pan with a tub of cream cheese and I add garlic and other seasonings (you can literally go for whatever you like to add, salt and lots of pepper is a must of course). You could probably cook off onion before blending it as well but I tend to just add onion powder as it’s faster. I then add a bit of stock just until the sauce is the perfect consistency to coat the pasta. That tends to do 4 of us and my very fussy autistic 18yo loves it (so fussy I can’t do any tomato based pasta dishes at all, not even bolognese). It’s literally the only way I get anyone else in our family eating green veg.

Cooked chicken , softened onion , garlic broccoli white sauce, seasoning. Chilli and cheese bung in oven

Broccoli parmesan creme fraiche. I like creamy lazy pasta.

what's the secret of restaurant pasta?
oil, salt, sugar...

secret to good pasta is to not overcook it. cook a minute or two less than it says on the pack.

cook in water with salt added, drain, return to pot, add a glugg of olive oil and (if desired) a handfull of grated parmesan or pecorino and shake to combine.

Puttanesca every time. Google recipe I usually do Jamie O version

favourite quick pasta sauce is to warm up a block of frozen chopped spinach, then add a block of blue cheese.
mix with the freshly cooked pasta.

Prawns (or any seafood) chilli, garlic, lemon juice, parsley/basil and chorizo if you have/like it. Pan fry in olive oil and it’s ready in the time it takes to cook the pasta. Best with spaghetti or linguine.

I'd forgotten about that. It is yum.

Lemon Pasta.

1 lemon per person
50g grated Parmesan per person.
80-100g spaghetti per person

Cook and drain the spaghetti, reserving 1tbsp of the cooking water per portion.

Add the juice and zest of the lemons + the grated Parmesan to the hot, drained pasta with the reserved pasta water, and stir.

Delicious on its own or with prawns, or chicken, or petit pois, asparagus and extra Parmesan. It’s really zingy and fresh.

Make ratatouille and a cheese sauce, combine in a baking tray with shell pasta (boiled) and bacon strips, bake in oven for 20-30 mins. Pasta bake.

Boil shell pasta, heat tin tuna and plum tomatoes. Make cheese sauce. Serve all together.

add Parmesan to both above.

Get any tortellini boil, sauté mushrooms and heat up spinach. Serve with Parmesan.

My vegetarian Aunty made the following dish for me as teen. It is probably the most simple, quick and easy dish ever and is so tasty. I think I've eaten it once a week since that day at my aunts house all those years ago.

Cooked pasta (whatever pasta you like best)
Cut up some mozarella
Throw in some plum or cherry or whatever tomatoes you like
Cut up sundried tomatoes
Add fresh basil leaves

Mix it all up. Drizzle some of the oil from the sundried tomatoes. Enjoy.

I'm a pasta fiend. Some recipes:

• Nigella's meatballs and spaghetti
• Nigella's mountain macaroni
• LEON spaghetti milanese
• Any recipe with lemon, anchovies & breadcrumbs
• Basic pancetta with garlic olive oil and basil, with linguine
• Handmade pumpkin ravioli (no meat), sage and cheese

I could give you so many recipes but hope this peaks your creative pasta cooking!

ruddy heck- didn’t expect more than a handful of replies so shall very much enjoy reading and making a shopping list thank you ☺️

Fry a chopped onion in butter on a low heat until translucent
Start to cook spaghetti
Turn up heat, add white wine, chicken stock cube and some pasta water to the onions
Add in grated halloumi
Spoon spaghetti in to sauce mix
Serve with grated halloumi

https://www.juliennebruno.com/blogs/wall-of-fame/spiced-squash-crematta-orzo?srsltid=AfmBOopSVgiPeJzuXoiL1KLkYLf9ENiUMG2ba1Q0RoJlhV3TzBXGZ5g3

mascarpone instead of crematta

Make sure you salt the water appropriately before adding the pasta. We stopped salting the water when kids were very young and we really noticed the difference, so much so that we sometimes cooked ours separately!

The pasta sauces in Jamie Oliver's early book 'The Naked Chef' and any River Cafe pasta recipes (Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers) are excellent. We had Jamie's sweet leeks amd mascarpone sauce recently. The River Cafe orechiette with ricotta and cherry tomatoes is a summer staple in our house. We sometimes do something similar but with batons of courgette fried in olive oil instead of the cherry tomatoes.

Use good ingredients. Good parmesan or Grana Padano makes a difference and extra virgin olive oil. There aren't typically loads of ingredients in Italian pasta sauces so the quality of those ingredients really makes a difference.

This is for a family so you would need to adjust accordingly. Fry off in boiling olive oil 10 chopped/peeled vine tomatoes. A whole bulb of garlic and a few sprigs of rosemary both finely chopped. Add in a pinch of chilli flakes with two chopped chorizo. Allow to fry off for a couple of minutes and then add 600ml of single cream, turn heat down and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Mix with cooked fusilli pasta and enjoy!