Creamy roasted red pepper and sun dried tomato pasta

   Hi, pasta lovers!

   Today I want to present to you my new discovery! If your mouth is watering when you hear about roasted red peppers and you loooove sun dried tomatoes because they remind you of Italy, then read on! 

   I found this recipe shared on Instagram by a Romanian influencer who made it at home. She also took it from servingdumplings.com, a blog I've never heard about before. BIG mistake! If you take a glance around you'll instantly feel hungry and you'll become a follower! Yep, that's what happened to me too! 

   Now, you know that I usually love to improvise and tweak recipes to make them my own and I did that with this recipe as well. I decided not to blitz the roasted peppers and sun dried tomatoes into a sauce because I wanted to feel their texture and I skipped the tomato sauce and the lemon because I added Pesto Rosso from Lidl. Other than that, I decided to made my own pasta from scratch. Why not? Fresh pasta is always better, right?

   So here's how I did it:



Ingredients for 2 people:

250g pasta (or make your own from here)

3 red bell peppers

100 g sun dried tomatoes, oil drained but reserved

50 g grated parmesan

200 ml milk

1 shallot or small onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

1 jar Pesto Rosso from Lidl

salt + black pepper

1/2 tsp crushed dried chili

+basil and grated parmesan, for sprinkling



Steps:

1a. OPTIONAL: Make the pasta yourself.

1b. Place the bell peppers on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Turn on your broiler to 250°C and if you can, place the peppers on the highest rack, close to the heating element (in my case it was the second highest because the tray wouldn't fit on the first one). Roast for about 5 minutes or until black spots appear, flip the peppers and continue to roast until all sides have been charred.

2. Place bell peppers in a plastic bag. Seal and let steam for about 5 minutes. Pull off the skins and remove the seeds, then dice them. Dice the sun dried tomatoes as well.

3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Boil the pasta until al dente and then drain.

4. In a medium pot, heat the oil and add garlic and shallot. Cook over low heat until soft, for about 5 minutes. Stir in the roasted bell peppers, sun dried tomatoes, pesto rosso and Parmesan. Pour milk, 50 ml oil from the sun dried tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.

5. Toss with pasta. Adjust chili, salt and black pepper to your taste and serve immediately with Parmesan and fresh basil.

Bon appetit! :)

Cheesy tuna pasta bake

   This recipe was born from a craving. Let me explain myself. After a lot of heavy meaty meals during the winter holidays, I felt like tuna for a change and I realized I missed pasta as well so I decided to marry the two and make a tuna pasta bake. I made a similar recipe once before but I wasn't super impressed with it, so this time I looked up some inspirational recipes. I found one I liked and I decided to tweak it and this is how this recipe was born :)  It's soooo cheesy and soooo delicious you'll really want to go back for more! ;) I feel like cooking it again already :)))

Ingredients for about 3-4 servings:

- about 200 g of fusilli pasta or your preferred pasta

- a tin of tuna chunks in sunflower or olive oil 

- 3 cloves garlic, crushed

- a pinch of dried oregano 

- a pinch of chilli flakes

- 1 teaspoon mashed anchovy filets or paste

- salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

- a 500 ml bottle of home made tomato sauce (Romanian "bulion") or a good quality store bought one

- about 100 g of grated Gruyere cheese or Parm cheese 

- about 6 slices of smoked cheese 

Steps:

1. Combine tuna and its oil from the tin, garlic, anchovies, oregano, and chilli flakes in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir and cook for 1 minute once oil begins to sizzle.

2. Stir in the tomato sauce. Increase heat to medium and simmer for about 10 minutes.

3. Fill a large pot with oregano salted water and bring to a boil. Cook your pasta until just slightly undercooked (2 min less than the package advice), then drain. 

4. Stir cooked pasta into the tuna tomato mixture, then add the Gruyere or the Parm.

5. Pour everything in a glass tray and cover it with the slices of smoked cheese.

6. Put the tray in the oven at 185C for about 15-20 min or until the cheese on top starts to melt.

Bon appetit! :)

Oli's Meatball Pasta

Ingredients for 4 servings:
- 400g Fusilli pasta or your preferred pasta
- 800 g tomato pasta sauce (or home made tomato sauce)
- 450 g ground pork
-150 g ground beef
- 1 medium onion, finely diced
- 1 egg
- 100g bread ground up into bread crumbs
- a handful of fresh sage, finely chopped up
- a handful of fresh basil, finely sliced
- salt and pepper to taste
-100 ml water (when you cook the meatballs)
- grated parm cheese (to sprinkle on top)
OPTIONAL: garlic bread

Steps:
1. Place ground pork, ground beef, diced onion, egg (whole egg), breadcrumbs, chopped sage, salt and pepper all in a bowl and hand-mix thoroughly, until everything is evenly mixed.
2. Make meatballs that are slightly larger than a golf ball.
3. Put the Fusilli pasta to boil until it is al dente.
4. Place the meatballs in a hot frying pan with a bit of oil.
5. Cover the pan with a lid so that the interior of the meatballs also gets cooked.
6. Rotate the meatballs to a different side every few minutes, so that all sides get evenly seared.
7. Once all sides are evenly seared, add 100 ml of water into the pan and cover it again. This will allow the inside of the meatballs to cook without the outside getting burned.
8. Once the water has completely evaporated, add all the tomato sauce into the pan and cover it again. I used a combo of store bought and home made tomato sauce (Romanian bulion), but you don't have to complicate your life like that :P

9. After about 6-7 minutes, add the thinly sliced fresh basil and also check the interior of the biggest meatball to ensure it is completely cooked.
10. If it is cooked, take the pan off the heat.
11. Mix with the Fusilli pasta.
12. Add some pepper and grated parm cheese on top of each individual plate and bon appetit! :D

Delicious Pasta Tuna Salad

   I know, I know, it's been more than 6 months since I last posted anything here. I won't find any excuses and just let you wonder when I'll post the next one ;) 

   Today we'll talk about something really really good that I haven't made in a loooong time (years), therefore I forgot how good it is. So, when I tasted it again I instantly thought of sharing the joy :D

   This recipe was born as a tweak from an original recipe of a friend of Oliver's so my dear husband got creative and presented me this yummilicious salad and got me in love with it ever since! Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for 4 people:

300g small pasta (I used cornetti/elbows) + a bit of oil

1 red pepper

2 celery sticks

a big. red onion

3 tuna cans

1/2 cup mayo

dill

salt, pepper, chilli flakes

Steps:

1. Cook the pasta. Once it's cooked, cool it down under cold water until it's room temperature and then set it aside adding a bit of oil and mixing so that it doesn't stick together. 

2. Chop up in small cubes the red pepper, the celery sticks and the onion.

3. Chop up the dill.

4. Drain the oil from the tuna and mix the tuna with mayo.

5. Mix all the components together in a bowl.

6. Add salt, pepper and red chilli flakes to taste

7. Bon apetit! :D