Hi guys hope you're well. So look pasta, one of the most beautiful things in the world. I love everything with pasta so
I'm gonna give you a handful of beautiful recipes that I think you're
gonna love. Hey guys we're gonna make the most beautiful spicy sausage pasta with gorgeous cherry tomatoes, loads of herbs, balsamic linguine. it's a real summer classic, a beautiful meal for six people. so get yourself a nice casserole style
pan something that can go in the oven. Happy days. First up sausages you can use
any one that you can get your hands on that's cool. But they've got to be good.
this is a Merguez sausage. This is a Moroccan style sausage made of lamb or
beef. Pinch it and squeeze it like that. I just find that's a kind of cuter
size for having around your pasta. Okay. Cut these off. So some olive oil goes
into the pan. Let's get our sausages nice and brown, that would just take a couple
of minutes. So I'll put that on a medium heat. You
know you could do this over a fire, a fire pit, on a barbecue, you know the
smells are incredible. As that colours up those beautiful spices come out and then
we want to start layering up the flavours. Bay leaf, a little bit of oregano, a little
bit of marjoram. It's gonna give you so much flavour.
Then just take one red onion finely chop it. That's the beginning of the veggies.
Whoo! I'm gonna go celery finely chop it that goes in. So good. Okay, garlic. I'm
just doing two. Finely slice it. So I'm taking a chilli. Take the stalk off and
then I want to get the seeds out. Just use a teaspoon if you just scrape those
seeds out and the white kind of membrane. That is where most of the heat is. We
don't want the chilli to blow your head off.
That's a failure okay, we want it just to be a nice warm juicy sort of hug of like
heat that kinda just gets the vibes going. We like that put that straight in. We definitely want to soften the veggies but we don't want
to burn anything to just take care of everything keep moving it around. Now
look that's one kilo of lovely tomatoes. Don't go buying the hard ones that don't
taste. Buy the over ripe ones that really do taste. Look at the colours guys.
Outrageous. Also what I'm gonna do now is just a little swig of water. You don't
need much but can you hear it's frying? Okay we want to kind of stop that, and we
want to sort of now go into sort of simmering away, blipping away sort of
mode. So you can see there's moisture coming out the tomatoes now, it's getting
saucy. I'm just going to season it with pepper, not salt. There's salt in the sausages so we don't over season it and also balsamic vinegar. Really, really nice it's
gonna be unbelievable. So about a tablespoon goes in. Toss this up. Wow.
So, so, good. One last thing I do. Get some herbs put a bit of oil on it, spray it
across the top like that. But guys how optimistic and wonderful and summery
does that look. So we're going to go in the oven for about 25 minutes. Not too
hot about 180 degrees Celsius, which is 350 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's just
gonna simmer and blip away. All the flavours are going to mix up and be
beautiful and that's gonna be amazing. And when that's ready I'm gonna serve it
with the pasta. Come and have a look at this. Ooh! It's looking gorgeous and
smelling pretty fantastic. We got some cooked linguini here. You can do with any
pasta that you want. I love serving it on a big old platter. Go in with that
beautiful sauce. Hot, steamy, sweet, sour, spicy. I love this. Now cheese
has a wonderful ability to join up all the flavours. So I've got three options,
fresh ricotta, parmesan. I think I'm gonna go for salted ricotta but use any one of
those. And guys that is really one of my favourite pastas. Beautiful spicy sausage
pasta, mix it up, serve it to your mates, tell them you love them.
And I tell you what they're gonna tell you they love you too because that is
one of my very favourite dishes. Gorgeous. A great summer pasta dish the flavour
from the sausage and the quality meat is coming through. We're getting spices,
we're getting beautiful sweet cherry tomatoes. Me and Gennaro are gonna give
you a delicious dish. This is spaghetti with a vodka and lemon arrabiata sauce.
Oh lemon and vodka arrabiata! Arrabiata sauce amazing. You're gonna
love it. Right so arrabiata which means angry. You've got chilli spice with spaghetti.
It's simple cheap comfort food. So good. But with lemon and vodka, next level.
Arrabiata, angry. It means quick, easy and full of flavour. That's all.
So in this pan we've got about 4 or 5 tablespoons of olive oil, extra virgin
okay. Low heat I'm gonna take four chillies that have been halved and deseeded and we're gonna put the chilies in here. Gennaro's got four cloves of garlic,
finely sliced. Yes I did. And he's gonna put that in here too and this is gonna be
really really lovely. I'm gonna use a lovely Sicilian lemon, or try and get an unwaxed lemon if you can. Or wash another lemon. And I'm just gonna put the zest in
here. And lemon, garlic, chillies, tomatoes, beautiful. Smell that, it's gonna smell like home. This reminds me home, reminds me Amalfi coast, remind my home town, remind me the family friend, everything. So very gentle frying, and now we're gonna go in with the vodka. Wowa! About three shots. We're gonna
flame it. In it goes so we're gonna flame that. And you don't have to flame it, actually it's lovely to have a little bit of heat there. You don't have to flame it but you are gonna get a more caramelised flavour. But when the
flames gone, nice plum tomatoes. Just a little bit of anchovy can go in. Four.
You'll never taste them but what they'll do is they'll beautifully seasoned
this sauce and just let it kind of simmer away. So we're gonna put that on
full whack now, turn the heat up. We'll boil that away at this stage when it's
getting more saucy then I can start breaking down the tomatoes. And look
this is lovely this is how we cook. Here come my little, come on kids. I've just lightly broken up the tomatoes and see that the chilies are still whole. You can keep the
chilies in, you can chop them up, you can take them out. Anyway you like. It's in your
control. We have a little taste now. Good. We have a little season. With salt. It's
very delicious, and then we're going to toss it with loads of hot steaming
spaghetti. Really good extra virgin olive oil at the end. Lovely parsley goes in and then a little bit of lemon juice. Right kids behave. I
don't want to make it taste cheesy. I'm literally using the parmesan as a
seasoning really. Such a wonderful. Oh my. Wonderful simple honest recipe. This is
it guys. Just finish it with a little olive oil. And maybe just a little brush of
parmesan. Yes. Vodka lemon tomato arrabiata sauce with spaghetti. Simple
cheap delicious you've cooked all the vodka away so even that lot could have
it. We already know there's chilli in it. Okay smarty. Anyway this is just for me and Gennaro.
Love kids don't you. How many kids you got Gennaro? Oh one, two, three, four, five,
six. That you know of. Lovely arrabbiata with a- I've got five. such a beautiful dish, so simple. Let's just, let's just, let's just tuck in. Do you mind if I tuck in, Gennaro? I love it. Can I try some? So good. Do you want some Petal? We're gonna cook some freshly made linguine. but you could use some dried, no problem. And I'm going to do some garlic, some chilli. We've got our langoustines here and our
prawns. Beautiful prawns. You ready? Off we go. Three minutes that's what we're
gonna do. He's gonna put some olive oil in there. Gennaro's got some dried chilli to get
that lovely flavour going. And finely slice some garlic. We're gonna use
parsley and some basil, absolutely delicious. A little shake of white wine
and we will be laughing. This is one of those lovely energetic pastas that you
can do super super quick. You've got your chillies, you've got the
garlic, the olive oil. If you come over here these are langoustines which are
beautiful. Go straight through and then straight through the half like that and
then what you've got is the flavour in there. Now once you get in there we can
take that little vein out and we can take this little sort of sack out here,
which we can remove. Everything else is completely edible just a little bit of more
olive oil. Some prawns and we're gonna get that back in the oven. So that is - the tomato - the base right. We've got the traditional cherries here. So as it
starts to fry up we can you know just throw it around. This is half cooked now and then we can go in with the tomatoes just like that so very
fresh. The seafood will be perfectly cooked and
the tomatoes will just be loosened up and softened. So back in the oven we go.
Do you want me to slice up some parsley? Yes. I'll finely sliced the stalks and I'll
roughly chop the leaves like that. The stalks don't throw them away they're
really really good, just finely slice them. And then what we can do is add just
a little bit of white wine not much at all, just a tiny little drizzle goes in
just to loosen up the flavours, the oil, the juice coming out of the tomatoes.
I'll put the stalks in as well. He's seasoning it by throwing it. Oh. Look at that. Look at that. Yes. So we've got some boiling salted water here and of course if you're using linguine from
home follow the packet instruction. So we'll just put a little lid on get that
boiling. It's only gonna take one minute to cook. Look at that. This is a dream. This is a dream! It's ready. You're gonna see him take the linguine and the waters gonna drip into here. And at the same time I'm gonna add a little bit more
extra virgin olive oil cold-pressed. And the oil and the hot water and the juices
from the tomato and the langoustine and the prawns, it's all gonna come together to
make this silky light beautiful sauce. There's one. This is so good. Come on, you can do it. Yes yes yes yes
yeah. Just a little bit. There you go. That's what we're talking about a quick
prawn linguini. Delicious. Very good. Delicious. You get the sweetness from the tomatoes but also you get the flavour really quickly from the shell of the
langoustine. But you can pull out the meat. That's so sweet. Oh my god.
Mmm thank you I'm making my dinner tonight. Prawn and langoustine linguini
with a little white wine, tomatoes, herbs and a lot love. Ciao! I gonna make one of
the most loved pasta dishes. Cacio e Pepe. What is cacio? Cacio is cheese, and black pepper. So two ingredients. You look at home what do you have in the cupboard? You must have a little Parmesan cheese and the one I make is with pecorino, because
it's the original you know? And also, plus you must have some peppers inside. This is a very Roman dish. It's a very very old dish. So the pasta is boiling. And let me show you how simple it is
to make it. So you have to have a large bowl on a plate like this. Grate the
cheese inside. Can be a lovely bit of Parmesan. Or pecorino is the one original recipe.
You just grate it, grate it, just enough for about a couple of people.
It looks plenty but I hardly use anything. You can see, come on. And see that is
enough. Let's put this one here. Little bit of black pepper inside. Abundance of black pepper because that is where we give you the flavour. Love it. Mix a little bit. You can see, look at that. Two ingredient, maximum flavour. Then you have look the pasta if it's ready. Oh yes it is ready. Sorry I have to
taste it. Mmm it's al dente perfect. So you pick it up. Easy. Extremely easy. Just put it inside. Come on, look at that. It's spaghetti you can see the people understand about pasta. They can see it's a proper al dente. It's not, you know, flat, which they're soft. You just put everything inside. I love it. I just love it. Put them on top. Then you need two forks to mix it. Yes. Now this is where it comes to the best.
Turn her out and then you use a little bit of the pasta water. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Then again you mix it to get a creamy out. Mix it. Right
here it is. Look at the lovely cream inside, look at that. That this is what I'm
looking. I'm looking for a lovely creamy. You know catching all the cheese
inside. Oh my goodness me. Yep it's done. So now, a little bit more cheese on top. Oh yeah! Come on, bundles of cheese. I love it. I love
it. Just like this.
it's two ingredients so you can afford it. Little bit of black paper, a little bit more. Grab a nice fork and buon appetito. Oh yes this is for me. Oh my goodness me. Yeah, wish you could taste it. You can taste it. Two ingredients, maximum flavour, do it. Be adventurous. It's not, it's a simples. Hallelujah. Arrivederci. Lovely people we are gonna make the
most incredible mac and cheese. I've got a recipe for you that's gonna blow your
mind. You interested? Let's do this. First up a
nice big knob of butter into a pan. Finely slice three of these onions as
the butter comes up to the heat. Fifteen minutes to make these onions goes sweet
and gorgeous. Medium-high heat a stir every now and again. Beautiful. So after
15 minutes you can see the onions have shrunk back down it's lightly golden. So
I'll take 3 tablespoons of flour and that's our thickening agent to turn our
milk into a silky gorgeous sauce and that will immediately suck up all of the
moisture from the onions and then I've got a litre of milk. So slowly slowly
we'll add that milk. As soon as it's absorbed we'll add some more. So the rest
of the milk goes in and we're gonna let that simmer while we cook the pasta so
of course we're using macaroni. I'm only gonna cook this for five minutes. I want
to half cook the pasta. And then let this simmer while we get on to the other
flavourings of this sauce. So when it comes to choosing the cheese you could
do one of course you could but I want to do it my style right. I want that balance
of flavour, depth of flavour and stringiness, ooziness. A hundred grams of
cheddar. Now that's a good flavour and a good melter. Then we're gonna go to a really stringy gorgeous cheese. So this is a raclette
but you could absolutely use a lovely Gruyere. 100 grams goes in like that and
then parmesan. I'll do that on a finer side and parmesan just has that amazing
ability to join up flavours make it all make sense. Now let's just talk about
nutrition. This is not a green dish but it is one of the most beautiful things
ever. But also as indulgent as this is, it's a brilliant carrier of seasonal
veggies. So lovely fresh or frozen peas, bang, amazing. Getting asparagus in there,
fantastic. A handful of spinach. But today we're keeping it really simple, and this
pasta has had nearly 5 minutes. Get into this pasta water and steal some of this
starchy water, and we might need that later. We've only half cooked the pasta and there's good reason for that because
when it carried on its journey of cooking it's sucking up that flavor not
water. So I'll get that in and I'll save back just a little bit for on top later. A teaspoon of English mustard gives it an amazing colour and gentle heat. A
little hack of a friend of mine that they swore by and I tried it and I did
it as a blind taste cuz I swore that it wouldn't work, and it did. Mango chutney, 1
teaspoon, slightly strange but go with it. We're gonna add a little bit of this
starchy water to get ooziness and silkiness. So it's really important to do
this off the heat. We don't want to be boiling cheese. At this point in a story
we go in with our macaroni, give it a nice little toss up. I'm excited. And I forgot
one seasoning. Of course Worcestershire sauce, a good couple of little swigs in
there and we are good to go. We're gonna take this gorgeous silky pasta-y goodness. Look at that. So that goes in the oven for half an
hour at 200 degrees Celsius which is 400 Fahrenheit. Now what I want to do to make
it even better is contrast that creamy cheesy gorgeousness. So we're going to
make a pangrattata. Bacon, herb, garlic. What's not to love? As it starts to get
lightly golden that is your cue to put the breadcrumbs in, and these flavoured
breadcrumbs are like a gift on a simple pasta dish, even lovely stews. Amazing. These breadcrumbs have gone golden and crunchy. They smell
amazing. Come on. Half an hour. Oh look at that. Come on! Mac and cheese beautifulness. Crack. Oh come on you know it makes sense.
A few beautiful salad leaves. The ultimate smoky bacon. Crispy bits. Enough talking let's just eat it. That's what we want. Nice cheesy bits. Mmm like the depth of
flavour is off the hook. One of the things I like to do which is
my own personal problem is to take a vulnerable empty gem lettuce leaf and
then load it with mac and cheese. And I actually do this at home and my kids are
around the table and they're just looking at me going "You are such an idiot", but then when they try it they realise that I'm a missionary
trying to make the world a better place through mac and cheese. Don't judge me. Okay you lovely people we are gonna make
a beautiful pasta dish. We're gonna make veggie bolognese. This is from my new
cookbook 'Super food family classics'. We've taken one of the most classic
family recipes, spaghetti bolognese and we've made it veggie. It's really
nutritious, it's perfectly balanced, it's three of your five fruit and veg a day
which is fantastic and it's bigging up wonderful ways to get your protein
without eating meat which is always really handy in modern day life. So look
we got two sticks of celery, two carrots, two onions, two cloves of garlic. I'm using 20
grams of dried porcini here that's the only sort of ingredient you've got to
find really but they're in the supermarkets and this gives you the body
of flavour right. It's a really humble delicious meal. So a couple of
tablespoons olive oil into a pan. Put that on a medium heat. Celery, nice and
fine. We're gonna slice up some garlic here and two sprigs of rosemary, finely
chopped. Two carrots, 1/2 centimetre dice. This is a rustic peasant dish and it's
gonna make you really really happy. I'm using red onions you can use white if
you want. Finely chop it. We've got that on a medium heat and I'm gonna put a lid
on I'll give that a little shake and just sort of slowly sweat that off
without colour for about 15-20 minutes. Before I kind of disappear I'm just
going to cover the dried porcini that's very savoury it's got a real deep
incredible broth. So this has had about 20 minutes now and it's just frying away
nice and gently. I can just turn the gas up a little bit. Hundred mls of Chianti
goes in there, let it cook away. So while that's frying
away, add couple of leaves of bay leaves. They can go in now let's just roughly
chop these mushrooms. These have rehydrated now. It's only 20 grams guys
but it's big flavour. We're gonna go in with the broth now guys. We're ending the
frying process now. Often there's kind of little bits of grit. Discard that. We're
gonna go in with the tomatoes loosely bash those up and they'll fall apart as they
cook. I'm just gonna put a swig of boiling water in each tin. Just swill it
around. So tomatoes are in. Now lentils they're brilliant they absorb flavour
just like meat would. So we're just going to break up some of those tomatoes and
we're gonna turn the heat back down to sort of medium. And I'm gonna let that
just kind of simmer and blip away for about 30 minutes, and then I'll show you
what to do next. So let's have a little taste. This is your opportunity to have a
little season. And the heat's off now, I can put a little parsley through this
lovely ragout. You could use basil if you wanted to, you can mix it up, or lovely
marjoram or something like that. In the pan next to it I have some pasta. 80
grams per person. I've traded up from white pasta spaghetti to whole wheat
pasta. Three times the amount of fibre in whole wheat products. More B vitamins so
really really good. So what I'm gonna do is steal a little bit of water. I'm just
adjusting the texture and I want it to be nice and loose so it just catches the
pasta in a beautiful way. That pasta has had it's sort of eight minutes now it's
ready and raring to go. So drain your pasta and just keep a little bit of that
cooking water okay, and I'll show you why in a minute. So I'm just gonna do a
couple of portions of this. Look at that. Just mix it up. Parmesan. 15 grams or so.
The seasoning of the parmesan just brings the lovely flavours together. Now it's
starting to get thick now right and a bit claggy, and that's not cool. So
we're gonna add some of that cooking water and that's going to keep it nice
and loose and gorgeous. So let's plate this up. And before all the veggies start
telling me off saying that parmesan is not vegetarian, this is actually a cheese
called Bella Lodi which is using a vegetarian rennet and it's very similar
to Parmesan. So here we go the lovely veggie bolognese. Get in there. Mmm really good. Sort of slightly smoky
from the rosemary and from the porcini. Sweet from the tomatoes and you got all
the veg that's kind of just cooked into the lentils to be that kind of ragout-y
sort of texture that we love. But give it a go. Super healthy and super delicious,
and at the end of the day that's what it's all about. Pasta is an ultimate comfort food and
I've given it the superfood treatment. Teaming it up with a sauce celebrating
silky aubergines, sweet and tangy tomatoes spiked with garlic, basil and chilli, it's
a comfort food dish with no guilt at all. Really healthy, and it's all about loving
these. So I'm just gonna take the end off the aubergine like that. Just get rid of
that little stalk. I'm gonna zip the aubergines in half and crisscross the flesh
here just to let the steam in. And about 20-25 minutes of good steaming is all we
need to make these lovely aubergines incredibly creamy and silky and elegant
and gorgeous. We're also gonna steam two chillies but prick them first to stop them
exploding. Next lightly toast 40 grams of pine nuts. This is a vegetarian dish but
we still want to get that hit of protein so we're getting it from the ricotta, the
parmesan, and the pine nuts just kind of badly pound them up so you get some
chunks you get some whole ones but also you get some kind of mush as well. And
it's like a little sprinkle at the end with a little
parmesan, some basil leaves. It's gonna look and taste incredible. Finely slice
two cloves of garlic and remove about 30 grams worth of basil leaves from the
stalk. There is flavour and fibre. So this is going to go into the base of my sauce
and there's a kind of sweetness in the stalks that you get that you don't get
in the leaves. We're gonna put a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Let's put in
our garlic and our basil stalks. Then I'm gonna go very quickly in with two tins
of the lovely tomatoes. Pour the tomatoes in, refill the tins with water,
and add to the pan. Lovely, so bring it to the boil.
Get the heat nice and high and then break up those tomatoes with the spoon,
and then we'll turn it down to a little gentler medium heat. Let that bubble away
for 10 minutes. Time to cook your pasta. And I'm gonna use the water that's been
steaming the aubergines. I'm using whole wheat to ramp up the fibre. Let's check
our steamed veg. Look at that. You can kind of feel already that they're
getting sort of absolutely silky smooth. Just pull the chilies out, they're gonna be
nice and tender and sweet. Just take the end off, use the tip of the knife and
just run it down the length of the chilli. You can see how tender it is. You can open
it out like a book. You can see where the skin and the flesh just separate and we
can just use the tip of the knife to get rid of all the seeds. So that's the
really hot part of the chilli. What I do want is the fruit, so if you see how
brilliantly this skin comes off when you steam it. Absolutely beautiful. Next finely slice the chilli and add to the pan. Stir that beautiful chilli in and what you can do to speed up the texture just use a potato masher to just squash the
tomatoes like that. Now let's have a little feel of the aubergine. You want it
just to fall apart so can you just tear it. Yeah that's exactly what we want.
Gorgeous. And all I'm gonna do now is simmer this. Let it all cook into each
other, almost casserole. And that is gonna be beautiful.
Leave to reduce down for about 7 to 10 minutes. So it's looking good. Let's drain
the pasta it's had its time. This is ricotta, it's a very very light cheese.
It's a wonderful carrier of flavours. You can see it's bright and delicate and
gorgeous. We'll go in with the pasta, in with the basil. I love the way the
ricotta just kind of curds and breaks up. So gently does it.
This is for four people so it's generous. So look if you're happy to give it a toss
that's even better. Although you do sort of cover yourself with it but that's
alright. Just go over to a nice big platter. Pour that lovely sauce over. It's
so generous so sweet, it's so beautiful. Scatter with more bright punchy basil.
Then the toasted pine nut crumbs. And then a light brush of parmesan from a
high all over the place, and that my friends is one of my favourite pastas
it's really really good. So that really is a super food classic pasta dish.
Gorgeous. It's got all of the food groups dairy, protein, carbohydrates and your veg,
and look at it. Right let's get in there. Let's have a go. Mmm the aubergine is silky
smooth a sweet tomato sauce and that hit of chilli is really really good.
And you know what it's 470 calories. It's really really good. Little side salad, and
you are laughing.
