Wednesday 16 May 2012

Linguine & Chargrilled Veg in a Passata Sauce

1 Pepper (sweet)
1 Courgette - sliced with a potato peeler
1 tbsp of Chili Oil
1 Jar of Roasted Passata Sauce (see Recipe)
1 Large handful of Linguine Pasta
Salt & Pepper to season

Heat a griddle and add the Chili Oil, cut the pepper into large slices and grate the Courgette lengthways, to create large slices. Add these to the oil once smoking and cook till they are tender and brown. Remove and place to kitchen towel to drain excess oil and leave to cool.

I've used Linguine pasta, but any pasta will do. Place the pasta into a pot of salty water and cook as directed, for the Linguine I tend to snap this in half, as I don't like the pasta too long. Once cooked drain and run through cold water.

Add the Roasted Passata Sauce to a large pan and heat slowly over a medium heat, after a few minutes and when the sauce beings to bubble, add the Courgettes and Peppers (sweet) which can cut into smaller pieces, to the sauce, warm for a few minutes and then add the pasta, season with salt and pepper as required. Once everything is boiling away and heated through, pour into a large bowl and enjoy.

As a side dish, why not try my Homemade Chili and Garlic Bread:

Slices of French bread
Butter
Chopped Garlic
Chopped Chili
Dried or Fresh chopped Mixed Herbs
Salt & Pepper to season

This is very simple to make and you can make as much or as little as you like, mix the butter, garlic, chili and mixed herbs together to make a paste, then season as required and then spread onto the French bread, which has been cut into circular slices. Place on a baking tray and cook in the oven until brown.

Another great recipe for the Cook Book.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Blooming Hot Sauce

As mentioned on my TLB facebook page recently, I've started to put a plan together for selling a few jars of the preserves I've been making, such as Chili Jam, Tomato Chutney and even the Passata Sauce and to my surprise my boyfriend, Zac, suddenly decided he wanted to make and sell Hot Sauce.

For those of you who have read about the Chili plants I bought for him last year, we ended up growing quiet a large amount of chilies and we found it really hard to decide what to do with them. But making Hot Sauce now seems like a great idea, Zac found a really easy recipe online and from this he adapted the recipe to fit the types of chilies he bought (at the moment our plants are very small), for his tester batch. He used x3 medium green chilies and x4 small Caribbean scotch bonnet Chilies.

I left him alone with the ingredients in the kitchen one Saturday afternoon and a couple of hours later we had a large amount of Hot Sauce, all bottles up and ready to test. Which we did the following day and I must say it was surprisingly tasty and really not that over powering in hotness, we love it so much we've been using it with everything.

                                                                        Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: 29 April 2012

This can only mean that test no.1 was very successful and once we've finished off this batch, it'll be onto the making of the next one.