Pasta... what to have with it?!

[Sw33tTooth]

Hi! I’m in need of a super quick dinner tonight, normally I will just cook some pasta and bacon then throw it all together with some passata. This just seems boring... what else could I throw in with it to add more flavour? Cooking isn’t my thing as you can probably tell from my very boring throw together meal!
So any suggestions of other things/spices I could throw into the mix would be appreciated!

If you have some Philadelphia or similar you could add that at the end and make a creamy tomatoes sauce?

Do you have any root veg you could roast and add (or blitz into the sauce)?

If you're sticking with tomatoes and bacon how about adding a slug of red wine and some rosemary?

Could you use cream cheese instead of passata?
Chuck some garlic in with the bacon while it's frying, (you can even use frozen) add some thyme and some lemon zest or juice or both and then stir in the cream cheese and toss your pasta in that?

If not instead of using bacon you could use bits of chorizo with the passata and put a bay leaf in the pasta cooking water.

Or throw a handful of frozen peas in with the pasta about 2 minutes before you drain it. Then add black pepper and some ready cooked prawns to the pasta with some cream.

Thank you! I’ll definately try these suggestions!

I’m cooking a seafood one at the moment.

Pasta, smoked salmon and crème fraîche

Sliced onion, mushroom, spinach, chilli, + fish/chicken/bacon/prawns and crème fraîche & served with Parmesan.

Smoked salmon, spinach and mascarpone?

Olive oil, garlic chilli, cherry tomatoes? Could add prawns too?

Cook some tender stem broccoli in with the pasta. Fry some chilli and garlic and 2 or 3 anchovies in olive oil. Scatter with toasted pine nuts

Tuna mayo sweetcorn cucumber tomato
Cooked tuna with tomato, pepper and onion and tomato sauce or pasaata
Sausages and pasaata
Prawn mayo
Philadelphia, garlic, tomato, red pepper, lettuce
Ratatouille
Mushrooms and white sauce
Leeks and cheese sauce
Chicken mayo

Olive oil, sliced cherry tomatoes, salt, chilli flakes, dried Italian herbs and some garlic in a small roasting dish in the oven for 20 mins on high.

Boil pasta for the appropriate amount of time (e.g around halfway through the tomatoes cooking)

Add the pasta to the contents of the roasting dish and stir until the pasta is coated in oily tomatoey goodness.

Eat.

Sometimes I add chopped bacon or prawns to the above depending on if I have either in the fridge/freezer that need using up.

It's ridiculously delicious for how simple it is.

We had pasta for dinner with a cheesy sauce made with double cream and then threw in bacon lardons and broccoli, it's a bbc good food recipe and was so easy to make but it was honestly the best bowl of pasta I've ever had. So comforting

Pesto (the red one is our preference) with olives, cherry tomatoes and rocket wilted in.

Mushrooms chopped and cooked with a little garlic butter, then a splodge of philadelphia stirred in - 5 mins. Your bacon would be nice in this.

Cherry tomatoes, halved, a tablespoon of drained capers, chopped, some olive oil and sliced olives, warmed through before stirring onto cooked pasta.

Thanks everyone! I’m going to be eating pasta and trying these out for the next few weeks!!

A bit late to this, but cacio e pepe: spaghetti, lots of pepper and pecorino romano.