Tomato, Olive and Parsley Pasta

Some of the simplest and cheapest dishes one can make are pasta dishes. One reason for this is because pasta is so amazingly versatile. One can throw it together with all manner of things, probably because alone it doesn’t have a particularly strong taste, or a particularly individual texture. It merely provides a good body of carbohydrates for a sauce, which makes it an ideal food for here. Yet there have been very few pasta recipes posted on this blog, and I’m not quite sure why. As such, over the coming weeks I’ll seek to rectify that – after all everyone has at least some form of pasta in their cupboards, and one can pick up a 500g pack of spaghetti for a mere 41p.

Until now I’ve never written my recipes down before blogging them, and I’m afraid I’ve now done so many I’ve actually started forgetting them. So, from now on I shall be writing out a little recipe book in order to cease any “senior moments”. Perhaps when it is full it can become part of a competition or something, we shall see.

It is only in the past year that I’ve really started to get along with olives. I now love them, even if I can’t eat too many in one sitting. Our Spanish host over the summer, Paco, even remarked to me that he’d never met a man from Britain who likes olives. Indeed, my dad doesn’t like them – do other men? Or is this pure fabrication? It would be interesting to find out if the vast swathes of cheap olives available in supermarkets are entirely intended to be consumed by the fairer sex.

Tomato, Olive and Parsley Pasta {recipe}

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, mashed
• 1 red chilli, finely chopped
• 2 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• A generous pinch of sugar, salt and pepper
• A handful of pitted black olives, un-pitted will do
• A handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• Oil
• 400g spaghetti

Method:

1. Fry the onion, garlic and chilli in oil, until soft. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes. Put the pasta on to boil, whilst gently simmering the sauce. Add a handful of olives and half the parsley. Mix the sauce into the pasta and serve in bowls, garnish with a little extra parsley.

Cost: This is a really simple recipe, but it is delicious. It is also, as one might imagine, ridiculously cheap. Indeed, it weighs in at a lowly £1.20, and that’s for the entire thing. This means each portion costs around 30p, which is an absolute bargain. You may store it in the fridge for a couple of days, but you’d better use a pharmaceutical wrapper.