Exam Intelligence

(Did you enjoy the Quick Pasta Sauce? Here’s the follow-on recipe! - Ed.)

You’ll need:

• Pasta leftovers.
• A couple of sausages cooked and chopped up or a tin of tuna, or you could even add some bacon which has been grilled and cut up into pieces.
• If you are a veggie, then you can chop up a courgette or an aubergine and use that.
• Some cream - double or single will be fine
• Bread crumbs. I keep the bits of the crusty bread that are becoming a bit dry and put them in the food processor to make bread crumbs and this will keep in an airtight bag for ages in the store cupboard. If you aren’t sad enough to want to do this then you can either hand crumble some bread or use a food processor to make instant breadcrumbs.
• Half a handful of grated Parmesan or a full handful of cheddar cheese.
• Fresh or dried herbs. I suggest parsley and basil as it will parody what you have in the pasta sauce already.
• Olive oil

Principle/ Method

1. In a bowl, combine the finely chopped herbs, breadcrumbs and the cheese.
   
2. Add a tablespoonful of the olive oil. Mix it all together.
3. In a shallowish oven proof dish, hand mix the cold pasta, cooked sausages and or cooked bacon, veg or fish. Add some of the cream to loosen it all up a bit and spread it evenly around the dish. You’ll need to select a dish that’s appropriate for the amount of pasta you have left over obviously!
4. Spread the crumb mixture over the pasta layer.
5. Cook in a 160- 180°C preheated oven until the breadcrumb layer is turning golden brown. (takes about 20 mins depending on your oven and the freshness of the breadcrumbs!) The fresher they are, the more moisture it will have and the longer it will take to brown!
6. Serve with a nice green salad.

Buon appetito!

This is a great quick sauce made from real tomatoes and herbs (fresh is best, but dried will do if that’s all that you have available). You can add some meat or even a tin of tuna to it if you like, or have it as a vegetarian dish. This should be enough for two but If you double the amount then you can make a pasta bake the next day with the left overs - I’ll tell you how in a following recipe.

You’ll need:

• 4 medium tomatoes (or a handful of cherry tomatoes)
  
• Some white wine (or veg or chicken stock) or failing that; tap water!
• 1 small clove of garlic
• If possible, fresh basil and flat leaf parsley
• 1 fresh chili. (If you can’t get this use a dried one or chili flakes or chili powder… or even a bit of chili sauce!) Add less if you don’t want it too hot.
• 1 teaspoon of sugar (To help the medicine go down? I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist - Ed.)
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• Parmesan cheese. Here I really wouldn’t recommend using the dried stuff from the container - I think you are better off without it!
• Pasta of your choice. I don’t know how much pasta you like to eat or what type you are using so enough for two people.
  

Principle/Method

1. Put your pasta on to boil. Keep an eye on it while you make the sauce. If it’s ready before the sauce don’t worry, drain it, run it under cold water and let it rest on the side for a bit. If you are using fresh pasta, don’t bother putting it in the boiling water until the sauce is made as it usually only takes about 4 mins to cook anyway!
2. Crush or finely chop the clove of garlic and start to gently fry it in the olive oil over a low heat in a saucepan.
3. Roughly chop the tomatoes into chunks and add it to the hot oil. You can now turn the heat to a medium level.
4. Add a glass of the liquid (the wine or the stock or the water)
   
5. Let it bubble and stir occasionally.
6. Add the teaspoon of the sugar and the chili and then add some seasoning. Don’t worry if it doesn’t taste too rich yet, it will develop flavour as it concentrates down. Be careful not to add too much salt before the sauce has reduced or it will taste too salty in the final sauce.
7. Allow the sauce to reduce to at least half what it originally was.  It will thicken as it does this.
8. When you’re happy with the thickness and seasoning, grate a little parmesan into it and roughly tear or chop a handful of the fresh herbs and stir it all into the sauce and turn the heat off.
9. Add your sauce to the drained pasta (or your drained pasta to the sauce - whichever has more room in the pan) and mix it together.
10. Serve it with some more parmesan grated over the top.
    

Buon appetito!

(PS: For the eagle eyed person who spotted chili spelled with one L and thought it was incorrect…it can in fact be spelled both ways!)

You will need:

• 1 big frying pan or wok
• 1 knife for cutting things up
• Some teaspoons (to avoid cross-contamination) and a tablespoon
• Kitchen timer (makes timing easier!)
• 2 tbsp (tablespoon) groundnut oil
• 1 heaped tsp (teaspoon) Lazy Garlic (or freshly crushed garlic)
• 1 heaped tsp Lazy Ginger (or freshly grated ginger)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce (dark or light, it does not matter)
• Some freshly ground pepper and a few dried chilli flakes (or ideally Szechuan pepper instead of both)
• Optional: 1 level tsp Chinese Five-Spice
• 50ml tapwater
• Your meat of choice cut into 1cm cubes or thin strips to fry
• 1 packet stir-fry vegetables or
  • 4 carrots cut into thin strips
  • 100g mushrooms, quartered
  • 5 baby sweetcorn
  • 1 head of broccoli
  • 1 pepper of your choice of colour cut into strips
• Your choice of rice/noodles to serve with the stir-fry.

You then need to do the following:

1. Prepare everything so it’s easily at hand.
2. If you are cooking rice, start boiling before you do anything else, and depending on how long the rice will take, start the stir-frying at the right time to make sure that everything completes cooking at the same time!
3. Your stir-fry will be ready in about 10 minutes. If you chose noodles, they need to go on in about 5 minutes time after you start, depending on how fat they are. Read the relevant instruction on the packet!
4. Put the oil in a pan over medium-high to high heat.
5. Add the ginger, garlic, soy sauce and Optional Five-Spice to the pan and stir it up.
6. Add the meat and fry until starting to brown.
7. (Noodles should probably go in now).
8. Add the vegetables, the ground pepper and chilli (or Szechuan pepper) now.
9. Turn up the heat, and fry for 2-3 minutes then, watching out for spitting from the pan, add the 50ml tapwater (this will make sure there is enough sauce!).
10. Fry and stir for further 2-3 minutes.
11. Turn off the heat.
12. Drain your noodles/rice.
13. Serve rice/noodles.
14. Serve stir-fry over the top!

Voila.

This is very basic curry but will require you to have some spices. I highly recommend that you get some as they’ll be useful not just for this dish but for other things that I’ll post later as well. If you really can’t be bothered to get separate spices then go to the indian food section of your local supermarket and get a packet of curry powder of your choice and replace the individual spices with a spoonful or two of that instead

You will need:
One tin of Tuna in either spring water or sunflower oil.
Onion - finely chopped
2 big cloves of garlic - crushed
2 cm of ginger - crushed
one tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon of corriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon chili powder or a chopped fresh chili
bay leaf
cardamon pod
salt
pepper

Method
Add some sunflower oil to a hot saucepan (I don’t use olive oil for indian or chinese cooking as it smokes at higher temperatures and tends to impart a heavier flavour to the final dish). If you are using tuna in sunflower oil use a bit of that.
Start to fry the onions, garlic and ginger - this is a standard base for nearly all curries. Fry it quite gently - you don’t want to burn the garlic ond don’t need the onions to brown too quickly. It may take about 10mins or so to soften nicely.

While this is happening add the dry powders including a bit of salt and pepper to a bowl and add enough water to make a thickish paste. When the onions are soft and much reduced in volume, add the spice paste and fry it until the oil seems to separate out a little - some of the spices may stick a little to the base of the pan - don’t worry. You can add a little more water to the spice bowl to make sure you leave any in there. The onions usually kind of dissolve into the paste once you add it if they are soft enough.

Now add the tin of tomatoes, the cardomon pod and the bay leaf (and fresh chili if that’s what you’re using). Reduce down to at least 2/3rds the volume.

Drain any remaining oil or water from the tuna and add that as well. Stir gently so as to try and keep some of the bigger pieces unbroken.

Serve with a salad and nan or pain rice.

One of the recipes I cooked up during exam time.
Very simple, very straight forward, and fairly healthy as well!

LAZY CHOPS RECIPE

1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp “Lazy Garlic”
Juice of 1 half lemon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
Dash of water
1 tbsp olive oil
2 pork chops
4 carrots
1 courgette
125g bulgar wheat
1 tsp chicken stock powder
3 tbsp pesto (red or green)
sharp knife

Mix up thyme, pepper, salt, garlic, lemon juice, water and olive oil in a bowl. Pierce pork chops with knife multiple times. Soak chops in mixture for 10-15 minutes.

Prepare carrots and courgette and slice in slices about 1/2 cm thick.

Add chicken stock powder to pan of boiling water, add bulgar wheat, carrots and boil for 8 minutes whilst putting chops under grill.

Grill chops on side 1 for 4-5 minutes, then turn. Add courgettes to bulgar wheat pan.

Grill chops for further 4-5 minutes.

Serve with pesto (green or red) smeared on chops.

How lazy was that?