Thursday 1 May 2014

Fridge Raider Pasta

I love meal planning - in fact, so much so that I'm working on a series of posts for this blog all about meal planning and organising your food, but more on that later!

Some of my favourite meals, however, are the ones I don't plan. The ones that arise from the "end of the week, use up the contents of the fridge before shopping again" days. 

Today, I made a fridge raider pasta dish, which actually turned out to be pretty delicious, so I thought I'd share it with you lovely lot.
It was so good, Amelie cleared two platefuls! Tasty, healthy, packed with veg and a great way to make sure you don't waste those odds and ends in the fridge before you go shopping again.

Here you go, enjoy...


Fridge Raider Pasta with Sausages - serves 4

1/2 Butternut squash
2 onions
1 red pepper
2 cloves garlic
15 cherry tomatoes
4 sausages 
4 Tablespoons tomato puree
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1-2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
6 Handfuls pasta twists

Preheat oven to 200c.
Chop Butternut squash into 1cm cubes (no need to peel, the skin is really nice). Peel and quarter onion (I top and tail them as well), and deseed and roughly chop the pepper. 
Add squash, onion, pepper, whole cherry tomatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves into a roasting dish and toss with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Roast for 45 minutes - 1 hour, until squash is nice and soft, and everything is nicely caramelised and the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and tomato juices have turned into a lovely, sticky sauce. Remove the garlic.
Meanwhile, pan fry the sausages until fully cooked, and boil the pasta until tender.
Slice the sausages and add to the vegetables, along with the pasta and tomato puree. Add a couple of ladles of the cooking water from the pasta and stir everything together until nicely coated.
Serve in big pasta bowls with parmesan, if liked.

Variations: Sausages were just what I happened to have kicking about in my fridge, but you could use chorizo, smoked sausage, hot dogs, leftover chicken or beef, gammon, fish, or no meat at all!

Mushrooms and/or feta would be awesome in this, I just didn't have any.

The beauty with a fridge raider dish is that you basically just use up what you have, you could take this idea in a million different directions! You could replace the pasta with rice, couscous, potatoes, bulgur wheat, anything! Go forth and empty those fridges - tell me what you make!

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