Wake Up And Smell The Coffee.

                              Enjoying a cappuccino in the sun with my lovely friend Carron

I know I posted yesterday saying adios but I thought I'd share this with you before I set off for Spain, although it's not a recipe per se, it's something I tried and thought worth jotting down.

I'm not generally a lover of coffee and our obsession with skinny-organic-soya-mocha-frappu-cinos and the monolithic chains such as Costa and Starbucks who charge a small fortune for the pleasure of drinking them in their ghastly establishments, is not my cup of cappuccino.

However, when in Spain (as opposed to Rome) do as the Spanish do. Spaniards will linger over a coffee in a bar or café because stopping for a coffee is a social event, and unlike the coffee we're drinking (I mean come on, latte is nothing to do with coffee; it's just the Italian for milk) Spanish coffee is the real deal!

Spaniards like their coffee strong, smooth and aromatic, if I'm feeling lethargic a café solo soon knocks me into shape. Even better is a Belmonte, a solo with brandy and milk, the milk is often condensed and the sticky sweetness is a delicious accompaniment to the strong coffee and brandy.

                                                                  A Belmonte coffee

A carajillo is a solo with brandy and no milk, the Spanish say this is a good coffee to put you in a dancing mood!

But my all time favourite is an Asiatico coffee. Made with a solo, condensed milk, cognac, a few drops of licor 43, a couple of coffee beans, lemon rind and cinnamon.

                                                         Costa Coffee eat your heart out

Everything about Spanish coffee is superior to our coffee, even the attitude with which they drink it, you wouldn't see a Spaniard walking around drinking out of one of those awful paper cups with the horrible slit in the plastic lid. Every year we throw away 2.5bn disposable cups and they go straight to a landfill, all because we can't even sit down for ten minutes to drink a coffee.

Anyway, I've been known to put a chilli in my cafetiere before now, I think I got the idea from Jamie Oliver but don't quote me on that. Chillies release endorphins and the combination of coffee and chillies gives a real kick (who needs drugs!)

My latest idea was to add cardamom seeds to my cafetiere, cardamoms are often grown in coffee plantations so it made sense to me to combine the two ingredients. The seeds have a lemony, flowery flavour and are often used in desserts such as rice pudding, added to which, like all spices, they have a myriad of health benefits.

Always buy whole cardamom pods, as the flavour will be more intense. The mistake many people make is by using the whole cardamom, the pod can be tough and bitter (the seeds are sweet) always remove the seeds from the pod by crushing the pod with a rolling pin or other weighty utensil.

Add a heaped teaspoon of cardamom seeds to a tablespoon of coffee, place in a cafetiere and allow to brew for 5-10 minutes

Truly speaking, any spice could be added to your cafetiere, a cinnamon stick, star anise (I drink peppermint and liquorice tea to soothe my stomach) cacao beans (another stimulant) I shall certainly experiment and keep you posted and I'd be thrilled to hear of your ideas in the meantime.

'Come on, don't you ever stop and smell the coffee!'
- Justina Chen.

Love Donna xxxxxx

Espana Por Favor

                                      Doing what I do best, lapping up the Spanish sun.

Well, after the British summer that never was, I'm delighted to say in a couple of days time I'm off to my second home in Jacarilla Spain.

Upon returning from our last trip, roughly eight weeks ago, where temperatures in Spain had been in the thirties and days were spent cooling off in the sea and dozing in dreamy languor on sunbeds, followed by alfresco dining late into the sultry nights, it was quite a shock to return to such a dire summer here in England.

I always maintain I will carry on posting whilst I'm away, however, I think on this occasion I shall spend every opportunity to sit in the sun, swim, walk and of course eat and drink alfresco, there will be plenty of long wintry days for writing when I return to England in October!

My recipe today is one I cook occasionally whilst I'm away. There has always been a paucity of recipes for beef in Spain, not surprisingly, in a land where summer drought and arid land has made it hard for farmers to raise more than a few heads of cattle. Spain is still the lowest per capita consumer of beef in the EU.

Beef is bought from specialist butchers who concentrate on raising their own stock, consequently, beef is expensive but of the highest quality. As with all meat, Spaniards greatly appreciate it and it is very rare to see any waste. Spanish beef comes in different forms and often the cuts are quite different from what we English are used to. It is not unusual to see slabs of steak, served on the bone and often rather fatty.

                                        A cut of beef you might find in a Spanish butchers

Solomillo is a delicious cut of steak which is perfect for my recipe, I would suggest if you are going to treat yourself to this, you go to a butchers and get the best piece of free-range fillet beef he has to offer. This is not an everyday dish but a luxury for a special occasion maybe, and like the Spanish, it is better to eat less meat but when you do, go for the best quality.

Beef Wellington

Recipe
A good fillet of free-range beef 1kg
3 tablespoons olive oil
250g mushrooms, chopped finely to resemble coarse breadcrumbs
12 slices of prosciutto (available in most supermarkets)
50g butter
500g pack of puff pastry
Flour for dusting
2 egg yolks beaten
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven 220c/gas 7
Sit beef in a roasting tray and brush with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, season and roast for 15 minutes

Remove beef from oven and cool for 15 minutes
Heat remaining olive oil and butter in a large pan and fry mushrooms for 10 minutes, remove from pan and set aside
Dust work surface with flour and roll out pastry

Lay 12 slices of prosciutto on the pastry, slightly overlapping

Spread the mushrooms over the prosciutto

Beat egg yolks and brush pastry edges, place fillet on the mushroom/prosciutto and gently roll the pastry to encase fillet
Score pastry and glaze with beaten egg

Place Wellington on a roasting tray and cook in the oven for 20 minutes

Allow to stand for 10 minutes before cutting into thick slices

'Some of the best memories are made in flip flops.'
-Kellie Elmore

Hopefully I'll be in touch whilst in Spain
Love Donna xxxxxx

A Slice Of Comfort.

                         My dear friend Jane one of the last photos taken just before she died

Mahatma Gandhi said: 'A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats it's weakest members.' Unfortunately, we here in Britain seem to have forgotten that some of our weakest members are the elderly. Often lonely and abandoned because they are either too proud or too ill to fight their corner, this vulnerable generation of people have been sidelined because we venerate other causes. Us Britons, we of the charitable, open-handed, humanitarian and philanthropic nature, are not quite so magnanimous when it comes to helping an old and infirm person. Thousands of elderly people are dying alone and there are eight 'lonely' funerals funded by councils for old people who have no friends or family taking place everyday!

My friend Jane was neglected by GPs and social services and by society, yes she had a care package which saw her through a rushed half hour in the morning to get her out of bed, on the toilet and in a chair with a bowl of cereal until the next rushed visit at lunchtime, her day ended with a hasty microwaved meal and being shoved back in bed before 9pm. There was no respect for this woman who had been struck down with a debilitating disease, just hours of loneliness and helplessness, many spent lying on the floor because she had tried to grasp an out of reach remote control or glass of water and had fallen.

The indisputable fact is, hundreds and thousands of elderly people here in Britain are being routinely ill treated by the health service, carers, social services and we citizens generally, we are all complicit in not meeting our obligation to look after our elderly.

The fact that our elderly are dying of neglect in care homes and hospitals has been laid bare. People are not given assistance if they need help eating and there have been cases of elderly people in a 'caring' environment left without food or water which has culminated in their death. Patients are often left soaked in urine or lying in faeces, wounds left open and dressings unchanged. We deride other countries for the way they treat their citizens and welcome refugees with open arms, yet we show appalling and shameful neglect towards our old people.

My friend Jane spent her working life in the care industry and her private life looking after her parents, yet in her hour of need there was nobody to care for her. People aren't so keen to volunteer their services when it comes to helping the aged, perhaps there isn't enough kudos attached, consequently Jane, like many others, spent the last months of her life scared and isolated.

No one should face old age or illness alone, we should all be a source of support to our elderly and vulnerable, a friendly face, a cup of tea and a chat, anything that reduces loneliness, and if you have a spare bedroom.........

I didn't do enough for Jane but I'm more aware of my elderly neighbours since her death, I have decided to make a cake once a week and share a slice with those that might enjoy a bit of company, as my mum used to say: 'The world can always be set right again by small acts of kindness rather than grand gestures!'

Butterscotch Brownies

Recipe
200g butter
200g butterscotch chocolate, roughly chopped (I used Green and Blacks)
350g caster sugar
40g cocoa powder
100g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs, lightly beaten
3 medium squares of fudge, roughly chopped

Preheat oven 180c-gas 4
Line a 22cm tray with baking powder
Melt the butter and chocolate in a bain marie
Put the sugar, cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl, stir to combine
Stir in the eggs and the melted chocolate, fold through the fudge pieces
Tip batter into a tin and bake for 35-40 minutes

Remove from tray and allow to cool slightly before cutting into squares

 

                                                     Delicious eaten warm with ice cream

I'm sure this post will cause some controversy, however, ask yourself, when did you last check to see if an elderly neighbour is ok? Have you ever volunteered to visit a dementia ward or care home for a couple of hours a week? I applaud the fact that we are inviting victims from other countries, we're 'caring' it's what we do, but we can't ignore the fact that our 'care' doesn't extend to our own elderly!

'You must be the change you wish to see in the world.'
- Mahatma Gandhi

Love Donna xxxxxxx

A Trip Down Memory Lane.

                 A very glamorous lady enjoying some ballroom dancing at Sinah Warren.

I know many of my posts are rather nostalgic, maybe it's my age, I don't know, but I have so many fond memories of my childhood days and feel that the world has somehow become a much more frenetic, cacophonous, blinkered and intolerant place to be.

A friend recently sent me a wonderful article about the high street of our youth, this evoked many memories of a time when the high street was the heart of community life. For the elderly and stay at home mums the high street was an essential life line, daily trips to the shops, where the butcher, grocer, bank manager and local cafe owner knew their customers, was a social occasion. I can recall vividly many a trip to the shops where, by the time my mother had chatted to shopkeepers interspersed with stopping to talk to neighbours, a round trip for a loaf of bread could take a good couple of hours.

A typical grocer shop where produce would be weighed and wrapped, not a sell by date in sight!

Before mammoth corporations destroyed the high street, customers would visit the grocers for cheese and freshly ground coffee, the bakers for freshly baked bread, the butchers for whatever cuts of meat he had available and the greengrocer for seasonal fruit and vegetables. If we were lucky, we children would delight in a visit to the sweet shop where for a few pennies we could choose a quarter of sweets from the glass sweet jars lining the walls.

As readers already know, my Italian grandparents owned a café in London. Around 2000 Italian cafes opened across the UK after the second world war and along with working man cafes,  they were a warm, familiar place where you could get a cheap meal, a cup of tea and a warm welcome from a friendly face.

 One of the few remaining Italian cafes, many having been forced out of business by corporate chains

I can also recall visits to radio rentals where my father would pay our monthly rent on our telly, it wasn't unusual to rent a TV back then. Ever the joker, I remember going in once and when the obviously new young member of staff asked my dad if he needed any help, he replied, 'No, we've just come into watch the telly if that's ok?' I can't remember who was more embarrassed, myself or the young girl in question.

When he first left school, aged fourteen, my father worked in his local grocer shop where his first job of the day was to wipe off any mould which had gathered on the sausages. Given our fanatical obsession with use-by dates this seems an almost unbelievable story, however, dear readers, it's true.

Sausages are traditionally the logical outcome of efficient butchery and, as I have been writing about, the notion of wasting nothing. All the scraps, organ meats, blood and fat would be salted to help preserve them, they would then be stuffed into casings made from intestines of the animal. These were a cheap meat dinner and most housewives repertoire consisted of sausages either in a casserole or toad in the hole or simply just bangers and mash (called bangers because there was so little meat content but lots of water and cereal which when they hit the hot fat in the frying pan, sizzled and spluttered like mini-explosions.)

Sausages have come a long way since then with strict rules about what goes in them. Anything claiming to be a pork sausage must have a minimum of 42 percent pork meat. However, there are still plenty of cheap, mushy, pink, flaccid sausages made by corporate chains who don't concern themselves with the horrific, intense farming barns the pigs are kept in. Sausages should always be made from free-range, organically raised outdoor pigs, preferably local, however, supermarket chains do widely stock outdoor-bred pork sausages and in the grand scheme of things they are still a very cheap meal, and quite frankly who wants to eat pink sludge?

With sausages coming in so many varieties there are endless ways to adapt them to different recipes. My current favourites are jalapeño or chorizo sausages which lend themselves well to this next recipe.

Sausage-ball spaghetti

Recipe
6 outdoor-bred pork sausages
2 onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon tomato puree
400g tin of tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried chillies (optional)
1 cup of red wine or stock
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
400g spaghetti

Cook the spaghetti to packet instructions
Remove sausage meat from skins and roll into even sized meatballs
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, add meatballs and fry gently, turning meatballs until they are evenly golden

Remove meatballs and place on kitchen paper, set aside
In the same pan, fry onions, garlic, chillies and tomato puree for 3-4 minutes

Add tinned tomatoes

Give everything a good stir, swill tomato can with red wine or stock and add to pan
Place meatballs in sauce and simmer for 20 minutes
Drain pasta and plunge into sauce, combine meatballs, sauce and pasta

Serve in large bowls and season to taste

'Once a culture becomes entirely advertising friendly, it seizes to be a culture at all.'
- Mark Crispin Miller.

                                                        Loving my new oven gloves!

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Meat-Free Tuesday

                 At a local Spanish restaurant with two musicians and flamenco dancers

 I've written in previous posts about my vegetarianism which started in senior school and lasted pretty much until my early thirties, with a few relapses here and there.

When we bought a property in rural Spain and I decided to embrace the culture, vegetarianism became a difficult diet to pursue. Spaniards, particularly in rural locations, have a deep understanding that some animals are for food and as opposed to many Britons, who quite often choose to close the door on the uncomfortable aspects of eating meat, eat parts of the animal we would eschew.

We gladly eat chicken breasts because the horror of battery farming is out of sight and out of mind, yet cheap cuts of meat such as oxtail, pork belly and offal are viewed as revolting, we have a skewed way of looking at things.

                        An Italian shepherd with a slaughtered lamb (courtesy Jamie's Italy)

For most of his life the shepherd in the above photo will have earnt less than the average Briton on the dole. For many Italian and Spanish people there is a real reverence towards the meat they eat, far from an easy come, easy go attitude, virtually every part of the animal will be eaten, there is more honesty between the concept of land to plate and life to death. Whilst we may shudder at the thought of eating offal or pigs trotters or seeing a dead animal, we Brits exploit animals for our greed and ignore the intense factory farming which lies behind our food choices which are hardly superior.

We should all consider eating less meat, both in terms of a balanced diet and for ethical reasons. Our grandparents, along with our Mediterranean cousins, substituted meat with vegetables, grains and pulses and used ingredients such as offal, cheap cuts, dripping (see previous post) and a typical mid-week meal might be corned beef hash or faggots. We should treat meat with respect, buy from trusted sources, waste less and if we can't afford to buy free-range and organic, cut our losses and eat equally delicious vegetarian meals 2-3 days a week.

I have recently made dinners such as liver and bacon, homemade faggots and homemade meatballs which I shall be sharing with you, however, today's recipe is meat-free and utterly delicious. The inclusion of anchovies may immediately put some of you off, however, once sautéed down anchovies lose their fishiness and just add a delicious savouryness that is hard to acquire with any other ingredient.

Spaghetti puttanesca

Recipe
500g spaghetti, cooked to packet instructions
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 handful of pitted olives (black or green)
12 anchovy fillets, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon dried chillies
Olive oil
400g tin of tomatoes
Salt and pepper
Grated Parmesan (or Cheddar)

Cook the spaghetti
Meanwhile fry the garlic, olives, anchovies and chillies in a little olive oil

Add the tomatoes, bring to a simmer, continue to cook for 4-5 minutes
Remove from the heat, plunge drained spaghetti into sauce, combine well, season and scatter cheese on top, serve immediately

This dish is very savoury (you won't miss the meat) nutritious, so simple to make and very economical, what's not to like?

'We are not encouraged on a daily basis, to pay careful attention to the animals we eat. On the contrary, the meat, dairy and egg industries all actively encourage us to give thought only to our own immediate interest, taste and cheap food, but not to the real suffering involved. They do so by deliberately withholding information and cynically presenting us with idealised images of happy animals in beautiful landscapes, scenes of bucolic happiness that do not correspond to reality. The animals involved suffer agony because we choose ignorance.'
- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Beef Dripping Now A Top Gourmet Food

                                                              My friend Carron and I

I'm sure my dear friend Carron won't mind my mentioning that upon visiting me this week she was on one of her regular diets. Don't ask me the details of this particular diet, it's all rocket science to me as are most diets. I've neither the patience or the willpower to not mix carbohydrates with protein, or eliminate sugar or only eat white vegetables or snack on seaweed and nuts.......

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mocking diets, Carron is testament to the fact that for many people dieting works. Yet, in our 'diet' obsessed society, Britons are now fatter than ever with, according to a report last year, 100,000 of us being classified as super-obese and 1 in 4 of us obese.

You know what I find interesting? In former times, ie my childhood years, working class people consumed food such as bread and dripping or jam, potatoes, syrup puddings and spotted dick, real butter and full fat milk, pies and savoury suet puddings, in fact, our grandparents had a dramatically higher calorie intake, yet obesity was almost unheard of.

The difference was that portions were moderate, food wasn't as plentiful or constantly available, fifty years ago a typical dinner consisted of, for example, lamb chops with boiled potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Meat was a luxury normally reserved for Sundays, consequently stews consisting of lots of vegetables were commonplace during the workday week and chocolate and cake was reserved for special occasions.

Nowadays we are inundated with processed food and research shows that obesity is unequivocally linked to the poorer classes who subsist on convenience food believing it to be cheap. Rather than thinking along the lines of eating filling foods that are high in vitamins and minerals ie vegetables, beans, pulses and complex carbs, people are opting for multi pack pizzas and cheap bulk buy ready-meals for instant gratification.

Snacking has become the norm nowadays with the average household stocking up on crisps, biscuits, yoghurts and sweets, all of which are regularly eaten between meals, and whilst the portion size of our meals have become larger and larger, often due to the fact that they are not nutritionally sustaining, we are no longer as physically active as our grandparents who walked nearly everywhere and had physical jobs.

Throughout my childhood dripping was always associated with frugality and thrift, however, it has now been declared a gourmet food.

Despite its humble origins, dripping has become 'posh' with Harrods now selling a 500g pack for £6.95. For me this is testament to how far away from cooking we have become. This poor man's ingredient, much loved by my own father who ate dripping on hot toast smothered in pepper, which fell out of favour in recent years due to health fears over animal fats and general snobbery, is now de rigueur within fashionable circles. Interestingly, amongst my father's favourites of dripping, bread and butter, rich fruit cake, tea with two sugars, cheese and crackers etc, he was never overweight, his motto was always: 'everything in moderation.' I believe that is the best diet ever!

With science starting to point the finger at sugar and carbs as culprits behind the surge in obesity, fat is creeping back on our menus. Dripping is the fat extracted from a joint of roast beef, along with the sticky meat juices in the bottom of our baking tray. Poured into a jug or bowl and kept in the fridge, the fat will separate and the meaty marmite textured gloop can be spread on toast.

With chef's up and down the country raving about dripping, be it spread on toast, used for ultra-crisp roasties or dripping fried chips, this food of nostalgia is certainly one of Britain's forgotten ingredients that is making a timely comeback.

Next time you roast a joint of beef put all the rendered fat, fatty deposits and sticky bits in the bottom of your tray into a bowl and refrigerate. Spread a combination of the fat and jelly on warm toast and season well.

Alternatively, you can buy ready-made dripping from many supermarkets such as Waitrose.

'You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering.'
- Portia de Rossi

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx

Collect Moments Not Things.

                                                       Collecting herbs from my garden

My mother often used to say to me: 'I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a boy with no feet.' This was a constant reminder of both how lucky I was to have the things I had and to never entertain envy or greed.

In today's society we value materials more than actual experiences and increasingly we have become jealous and covetous of our neighbour. Yet, never has there been a story where someone has learned an important lesson in life from a new pair of shoes or a flashy new car.

British neurologist, Oliver Sacks, died recently after spending a lifetime helping others. I have read his book 'Awakenings' and recently re-watched the film by the same name. Sacks, portrayed by Robin Williams, administered a drug (L-Dopa) to catatonic patients who had survived 1917-28 epidemic encephalitis lethargica. After decades of catatonia, patients were 'awakened' and re-experienced what it means to 'be alive.'

In one scene, patient Leonard Lowe, portrayed by Robert De Niro, excitedly tells Sacks, that people need to be reminded how wonderful life is, that it's a gift and that people shouldn't be walking around with glum faces.

Sadly, the patients 'awakening' had a limited duration and gradually the patients all returned to a catatonic state, their new lifes short lived.

Leonard would be even more upset by the state of modern society today. Rather than collecting moments we are too busy collecting things. Children are increasingly being bought off, we no longer have the time to make camps with them in the garden or collect things for the nature table at school (do they even exsist anymore?) We don't bake, or have regular sit down meals with our children, rather, we consign them to their bedrooms where they are constantly met with a barrage of violent images from their TVs and computers. And if we do take them out, it's not rock pooling or blackberrying, it's Legoland or McDonald's, the premise being, if we're paying for it, it must be good. As parents, we are our children's first line of defense, yet we are so caught up in possessions that creating cherished memories and teaching that happiness comes from within and cannot be measured by material gain, has somehow passed us by.

You may ask, what has this to do with a food blog? Well, shocking research which informs us that a third of primary pupils think cheese is a plant and 1 in 10 thinking a tomato grows underground, along with 85% of children across all ages saying they would like to learn to cook yet are denied the opportunity, is pertinent I think.

As we approach the weekend, we should think about Leonard Lowe, who realised during his short re-birth, that life is very precious. Rather than trawling the shops for more random things which will only make us happy temporarily, we should spend the weekend creating memories, providing us and our children with a variety of stories to tell, stories that cannot be found on a computer screen.

'It makes you aware of the knife-edge we live on.'
- Doris Lessing (quote on awakenings)

'Owning fewer keys opens more doors.'
- Alex Morritt

Have a great weekend.
Love Donna xxxxxxxxx

The Great British Bake Off 2015

                                Spending time in the kitchen can be hugely therapeutic


We're back in British Bake Off territory and I'm just settling down for tonight's episode which will see contestants making a sugar-free cake, followed by gluten-free pittas, then dairy-free ice-cream rolls, it's all terribly modern.

I'm heartened by the fact that Bake Off is so popular, the final of the last series was watched by a record audience of more than 12 million viewers. As someone who loves being in her kitchen, I like that viewers are saying Bake Off represents a safe haven in a harsh world.

Although it's terribly un modern to say, I think time spent in the kitchen, cooking and baking, is a kind and therapeutic affair with the added bonus of something delicious to eat at the end.

Interestingly, cake and biscuit sales slow down during the broadcasting of Bake Off, each year the series fuels a boom in home baking, unfortunately this is short lived. We actually love the idea of cooking, the comfort and often the nostalgia it represents, however, the average Briton now spends one in six of their waking hours online, it seems we would rather be devoting our time to social media, computer games or browsing websites than sifting flour.

With the children back to school after the summer holidays, mums will be returning to the fast pace of life, ferrying children to school and nursery, going to work and returning home tired, not surprisingly, many women will want quick and easy food options to feed their families. I still maintain that although many parents feel they can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time, and that bulk buying ready-meals, frozen pizzas and chips etc is the easy option, I think an hour less on the Internet could make all the difference. Ironically, the old saying 'cheap as chips' is a misnomer, fresh potatoes are cheaper than frozen chips but we don't want the bother of preparing them!

As readers will know, I'm not a professional cook and like many of you my time is precious, many of the meals in my repertoire are so basic I rarely post them. Looking back over many of my posts I see that I've deviated from my original idea of simple, achievable recipes and have become as random as a contemporary cookbook, throwing in many recipes that have no place in a busy, working parent's life. I shall be posting some quick and easy recipes in the hope that even the most frazzled amongst you might ditch the ready-made lasagne and frozen chips and spend a therapeutic hour cooking yourselves something delicious.

This incredibly quick and simple pasta dish is nutritious and utterly delicious, once you've tried it I guarantee it'll become a staple in your diet.

Pasta with bacon, peas and cheese

Recipe
400g pasta, cooked to packet instructions
1 tablespoon olive oil
50g bacon, I use streaky, cut into small pieces
1 onion, finely sliced
100g frozen peas
120g cream cheese, ricotta if you can get it
Salt and pepper
Grated Parmesan (optional)

Cook the pasta in a pan of boiling water, meanwhile heat the olive oil in a large pan
Add the bacon and cook until crisp, remove and set aside on a plate
Add onion to the same pan and cook for 3 minutes until softened
Stir in the peas and 120ml of water, cook for 2 minutes
Drain the pasta and immediately stir in the cream cheese
Add the pasta to the sauce, mix well, add the crispy bacon, season and serve immediately with a sprinkling of Parmesan if desired

 This dish is economical, tasty and takes less than half an hour to make.  

'No matter our age, everyone in our household knows that cooking and eating together is where the fun is.'
- Corky Pollan.

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx