Hi guys hope you're well. So look pasta, one of the most beautiful things in the
world. I love everything with pasta so
I'm gonna give you a handful of
beautiful recipes that I think you're
gonna love.
Hey guys we're gonna make the most beautiful spicy sausage pasta with gorgeous
cherry tomatoes, loads of herbs, balsamic linguine. it's a real summer classic, a beautiful meal for six people.
so get yourself a nice casserole style
pan something that can go in the oven.
Happy days. First up sausages you can use
any one that you can get your hands on
that's cool. But they've got to be good.
this is a Merguez sausage. This is a
Moroccan style sausage made of lamb or
beef. Pinch it and squeeze it like that.
I just find that's a kind of cuter
size for having around your pasta. Okay.
Cut these off. So some olive oil goes
into the pan. Let's get our sausages nice
and brown, that would just take a couple
of minutes.
So I'll put that on a medium heat. You
know you could do this over a fire, a
fire pit, on a barbecue, you know the
smells are incredible. As that colours up
those beautiful spices come out and then
we want to start layering up the flavours.
Bay leaf, a little bit of oregano, a little
bit of marjoram. It's gonna give you so
much flavour.
Then just take one red onion finely chop
it. That's the beginning of the veggies.
Whoo! I'm gonna go celery finely chop it
that goes in. So good. Okay, garlic. I'm
just doing two. Finely slice it. So I'm
taking a chilli. Take the stalk off and
then I want to get the seeds out. Just
use a teaspoon if you just scrape those
seeds out and the white kind of membrane.
That is where most of the heat is. We
don't want the chilli to blow your head
off.
That's a failure okay, we want it just to
be a nice warm juicy sort of hug of like
heat
that kinda just gets the vibes going. We like that put that straight in. We definitely want
to soften the veggies but we don't want
to burn anything to just take care of
everything keep moving it around. Now
look that's one kilo of lovely tomatoes.
Don't go buying the hard ones that don't
taste. Buy the over ripe ones that really
do taste. Look at the colours guys.
Outrageous. Also what I'm gonna do now
is just a little swig of water. You don't
need much but can you hear it's frying?
Okay we want to kind of stop that, and we
want to sort of now go into sort of
simmering away, blipping away sort of
mode. So you can see there's moisture
coming out the tomatoes now, it's getting
saucy. I'm just going to season it with
pepper, not salt. There's salt in the sausages so we don't over season it and also
balsamic vinegar. Really, really nice it's
gonna be unbelievable. So about a
tablespoon goes in. Toss this up. Wow.
So, so, good. One last thing I do. Get some
herbs put a bit of oil on it, spray it
across the top like that. But guys how
optimistic and wonderful and summery
does that look. So we're going to go in
the oven for about 25 minutes. Not too
hot about 180 degrees Celsius, which is
350 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's just
gonna simmer and blip away. All the
flavours are going to mix up and be
beautiful and that's gonna be amazing.
And when that's ready I'm gonna serve it
with the pasta. Come and have a look at
this. Ooh! It's looking gorgeous and
smelling pretty fantastic. We got some
cooked linguini here. You can do with any
pasta that you want. I love serving it on
a big old platter. Go in with that
beautiful sauce. Hot, steamy,
sweet, sour, spicy. I love this. Now cheese
has a wonderful ability to join up all
the flavours. So I've got three options,
fresh ricotta, parmesan. I think I'm gonna
go for salted ricotta but use any one of
those. And guys that is really one of my
favourite pastas. Beautiful spicy sausage
pasta, mix it up, serve it to your mates,
tell them you love them.
And I tell you what they're gonna tell
you they love you too because that is
one of my very favourite dishes. Gorgeous.
A great summer pasta dish the flavour
from the sausage and the quality meat is
coming through. We're getting spices, 
we're getting beautiful sweet cherry tomatoes.
Me and Gennaro are gonna give
you a delicious dish. This is spaghetti
with a vodka and lemon arrabiata sauce.
Oh lemon and vodka arrabiata!
Arrabiata sauce amazing. You're gonna
love it. Right so arrabiata which means
angry. You've got chilli spice with spaghetti.
It's simple cheap comfort food. So good.
But with lemon and vodka, next level.
Arrabiata, angry. It means quick, easy and
full of flavour. That's all.
So in this pan we've got about 4 or 5
tablespoons of olive oil, extra virgin
okay. Low heat I'm gonna take four
chillies that have been halved and deseeded and we're gonna put the chilies in here.
Gennaro's got four cloves of garlic,
finely sliced. Yes I did. And he's gonna put
that in here too and this is gonna be
really really lovely. I'm gonna use a
lovely Sicilian lemon, or try and get an unwaxed lemon if you can. Or wash another
lemon. And I'm just gonna put the zest in
here. And lemon, garlic, chillies, tomatoes, beautiful.
Smell that, it's gonna smell like home. This reminds me home, reminds me Amalfi coast, remind my home town,
remind me the family friend, everything. So very gentle frying, and now we're gonna go in with the vodka.
Wowa! About three shots. We're gonna
flame it. In it goes so we're gonna flame
that. And you don't have to flame it, actually it's
lovely to have a little bit of heat there. You don't have to flame it but you are gonna get a more
caramelised flavour. But when the
flames gone, nice plum tomatoes. Just a
little bit of anchovy can go in. Four.
You'll never taste them but what they'll
do is they'll beautifully seasoned
this sauce and just let it kind of
simmer away. So we're gonna put that on
full whack now, turn the heat up. We'll boil
that away at this stage when it's
getting more saucy then I can start
breaking down the tomatoes. And look
this is lovely this is how we cook. Here
come my little, come on kids. I've just lightly broken up the tomatoes and see that the
chilies are still whole. You can keep the
chilies in, you can chop them up, you can
take them out. Anyway you like. It's in your
control. We have a little taste now. Good.
We have a little season. With salt. It's
very delicious, and then we're going to
toss it with loads of hot steaming
spaghetti. Really good extra virgin olive
oil at the end. Lovely parsley goes in and then a little
bit of lemon juice. Right kids behave. I
don't want to make it taste cheesy.
I'm literally using the parmesan as a
seasoning really. Such a wonderful. Oh my.
Wonderful simple honest recipe. This is
it guys. Just finish it with a little olive oil.
And maybe just a little brush of
parmesan. Yes. Vodka lemon tomato
arrabiata sauce with spaghetti. Simple
cheap delicious you've cooked all the
vodka away so even that lot could have
it. We already know there's chilli in it. Okay smarty.
Anyway this is just for me and Gennaro.
Love kids don't you. How many kids you
got Gennaro? Oh one, two, three, four, five,
six. That you know of.
Lovely arrabbiata with a- I've got five.
such a beautiful dish, so simple. Let's just, let's just, let's just tuck in. Do
you mind if I tuck in, Gennaro? I love it.
Can I try some? So good.
Do you want some Petal?
We're gonna cook some freshly made linguine.
but you could use some dried, no problem. And I'm going to do some garlic, some chilli.
We've got our langoustines here and our
prawns. Beautiful prawns. You ready?
Off we go. Three minutes that's what we're
gonna do. He's gonna put some olive oil in there.
Gennaro's got some dried chilli to get
that lovely flavour going. And finely
slice some garlic. We're gonna use
parsley and some basil, absolutely
delicious. A little shake of white wine
and we will be laughing. This is one of
those lovely energetic pastas that you
can do super super quick.
You've got your chillies, you've got the
garlic, the olive oil. If you come over
here these are langoustines which are
beautiful. Go straight through and then
straight through the half like that and
then what you've got is the flavour in
there. Now once you get in there we can
take that little vein out and we can
take this little sort of sack out here,
which we can remove. Everything else is
completely edible just a little bit of more
olive oil. Some prawns and we're gonna
get that back in the oven. So that is - the tomato - the base right. We've got the
traditional cherries here. So as it
starts to fry up we can you know just
throw it around. This is half cooked now and then we can go in with
the tomatoes just like that so very
fresh.
The seafood will be perfectly cooked and
the tomatoes will just be loosened up
and softened. So back in the oven we go.
Do you want me to slice up some parsley?
Yes. I'll finely sliced the stalks and I'll
roughly chop the leaves like that. The
stalks don't throw them away they're
really really good, just finely slice
them. And then what we can do is add just
a little bit of white wine not much at
all, just a tiny little drizzle goes in
just to loosen up the flavours, the oil,
the juice coming out of the tomatoes.
I'll put the stalks in as well. He's
seasoning it by throwing it.
Oh. Look at that. Look at that.
Yes. So we've got some boiling salted water here and of
course if you're using linguine from
home follow the packet instruction. So
we'll just put a little lid on get that
boiling. It's only gonna take one
minute to cook. Look at that. This is a dream. This is a dream! It's ready.
You're gonna see him take the linguine
and the waters gonna drip into here. And at the same
time I'm gonna add a little bit more
extra virgin olive oil cold-pressed. And
the oil and the hot water and the juices
from the tomato and the langoustine and the
prawns, it's all gonna come together to
make this silky light beautiful sauce.
There's one. This is so good.
Come on, you can do it. Yes yes yes yes
yeah. Just a little bit. There you go.
That's what we're talking about a quick
prawn linguini.
Delicious. Very good. Delicious. You get the sweetness from the tomatoes but also you get the flavour
really quickly from the shell of the
langoustine. But you can pull out the
meat. That's so sweet. Oh my god.
Mmm thank you I'm making my dinner
tonight. Prawn and langoustine linguini
with a little white wine, tomatoes, herbs
and a lot love. Ciao!
I gonna make one of
the most loved pasta dishes. Cacio e Pepe.
What is cacio? Cacio is cheese, and black pepper. So two ingredients. You look at home
what do you have in the cupboard? You must have a little Parmesan cheese and the
one I make is with pecorino, because
it's the original you know? And also, plus you must have
some peppers inside. This is a very Roman dish. It's a very very old dish. So the pasta is boiling.
And let me show you how simple it is
to make it. So you have to have a large
bowl on a plate like this. Grate the
cheese inside. Can be a lovely bit of Parmesan.
Or pecorino is the one original recipe.
You just grate it, grate it, just enough
for about a couple of people.
It looks plenty but I hardly use anything.
You can see, come on. And see that is
enough. Let's put this one here.
Little bit of black pepper inside. Abundance of  black pepper because
that is where we give you the flavour.
Love it.
Mix a little bit.
You can see, look at that. Two ingredient, maximum flavour.
Then you have look the pasta if it's
ready. Oh yes it is ready. Sorry I have to
taste it.
Mmm it's al dente perfect. So
you pick it up. Easy. Extremely easy. Just put it inside. Come on, look at that. It's spaghetti you can see
the people understand about pasta. They can see it's a proper al dente. It's not, you
know, flat, which they're soft. You just put everything inside.
I love it. I just love it.
Put them on top. Then you need two forks to mix it. Yes.
Now this is where it comes to the best.
Turn her out and then you use a little
bit of the pasta water. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Then again you
mix it to get a creamy out. Mix it. Right
here it is. Look at the lovely cream inside, look
at that. That this is what I'm
looking. I'm looking for a lovely creamy.
You know catching all the cheese
inside. Oh my goodness me. Yep
it's done. So now, a little bit more cheese on top. Oh yeah!
Come on, bundles of cheese. I love it. I love
it.
Just like this.
it's two ingredients so you can afford
it. Little bit of black paper, a little bit more. Grab a nice fork and buon appetito.
Oh yes this is for me. Oh my goodness me.
Yeah, wish you could taste it. You can taste it.
Two ingredients, maximum flavour, do it. Be adventurous. It's not, it's a simples.
Hallelujah. Arrivederci.
Lovely people we are gonna make the
most incredible mac and cheese. I've got
a recipe for you that's gonna blow your
mind.
You interested? Let's do this. First up a
nice big knob of butter into a pan.
Finely slice three of these onions as
the butter comes up to the heat. Fifteen
minutes to make these onions goes sweet
and gorgeous. Medium-high heat a stir
every now and again. Beautiful. So after
15 minutes you can see the onions have
shrunk back down it's lightly golden. So
I'll take 3 tablespoons of flour and
that's our thickening agent to turn our
milk into a silky gorgeous sauce and
that will immediately suck up all of the
moisture from the onions and then I've
got a litre of milk. So slowly slowly
we'll add that milk. As soon as it's
absorbed we'll add some more. So the rest
of the milk goes in and we're gonna let
that simmer while we cook the pasta so
of course we're using macaroni. I'm only
gonna cook this for five minutes. I want
to half cook the pasta. And then let this
simmer while we get on to the other
flavourings of this sauce. So when it
comes to choosing the cheese you could
do one of course you could but I want to
do it my style right. I want that balance
of flavour, depth of flavour and
stringiness, ooziness. A hundred grams of
cheddar. Now that's a good flavour and a
good melter. Then we're gonna go to a really stringy
gorgeous cheese. So this is a raclette
but you could absolutely use a lovely
Gruyere. 100 grams goes in like that and
then parmesan. I'll do that on a finer
side and parmesan just has that amazing
ability to join up flavours make it all
make sense. Now let's just talk about
nutrition. This is not a green dish but
it is one of the most beautiful things
ever. But also as indulgent as this is,
it's a brilliant carrier of seasonal
veggies. So lovely fresh or frozen peas,
bang, amazing. Getting asparagus in there,
fantastic. A handful of spinach. But today
we're keeping it really simple, and this
pasta has had nearly 5 minutes. Get into
this pasta water and steal some of this
starchy water, and we might need that
later. We've only half cooked the pasta and
there's good reason for that because
when it carried on its journey of
cooking it's sucking up that flavor not
water. So I'll get that in and I'll save
back just a little bit for on top later. A teaspoon of English mustard gives it
an amazing colour and gentle heat. A
little hack of a friend of mine that
they swore by and I tried it and I did
it as a blind taste cuz I swore that it
wouldn't work, and it did. Mango chutney, 1
teaspoon, slightly strange but go with it.
We're gonna add a little bit of this
starchy water to get ooziness and
silkiness. So it's really important to do
this off the heat. We don't want to be
boiling cheese. At this point in a story
we go in with our macaroni, give it a nice
little toss up. I'm excited. And I forgot
one seasoning. Of course Worcestershire
sauce, a good couple of little swigs in
there and we are good to go. We're gonna
take this gorgeous silky pasta-y goodness.  Look at that.
So that goes in the oven for half an
hour at 200 degrees Celsius which is 400
Fahrenheit. Now what I want to do to make
it even better is contrast that creamy
cheesy gorgeousness. So we're going to
make a pangrattata. Bacon, herb, garlic.
What's not to love? As it starts to get
lightly golden that is your cue to put
the breadcrumbs in, and these flavoured
breadcrumbs are like a gift on a simple
pasta dish, even lovely stews. Amazing. These breadcrumbs
have gone golden and crunchy. They smell
amazing. Come on. Half an hour. Oh look at
that. Come on! Mac and cheese beautifulness.
Crack. Oh come on you know it makes sense.
A few beautiful salad leaves. The
ultimate smoky bacon. Crispy bits. Enough talking let's just eat it. That's what we want.
Nice cheesy bits. Mmm like the depth of
flavour is off the hook.
One of the things I like to do which is
my own personal problem is to take a
vulnerable empty gem lettuce leaf and
then load it with mac and cheese. And I
actually do this at home and my kids are
around the table and they're just
looking at me going "You are such an idiot", but then when they try it
they realise that I'm a missionary
trying to make the world a better place
through mac and cheese. Don't judge me.
Okay you lovely people we are gonna make
a beautiful pasta dish. We're gonna make
veggie bolognese. This is from my new
cookbook 'Super food family classics'.
We've taken one of the most classic
family recipes, spaghetti bolognese and
we've made it veggie. It's really
nutritious, it's perfectly balanced, it's
three of your five fruit and veg a day
which is fantastic and it's bigging up
wonderful ways to get your protein
without eating meat which is always
really handy in modern day life. So look
we got two sticks of celery, two carrots, two
onions, two cloves of garlic. I'm using 20
grams of dried porcini here that's the
only sort of ingredient you've got to
find really but they're in the
supermarkets and this gives you the body
of flavour right. It's a really humble
delicious meal. So a couple of
tablespoons olive oil into a pan. Put
that on a medium heat. Celery, nice and
fine. We're gonna slice up some garlic
here and two sprigs of rosemary, finely
chopped. Two carrots, 1/2 centimetre dice.
This is a rustic peasant dish and it's
gonna make you really really happy. I'm
using red onions you can use white if
you want. Finely chop it. We've got that
on a medium heat and I'm gonna put a lid
on I'll give that a little shake and
just sort of slowly sweat that off
without colour for about 15-20 minutes.
Before I kind of disappear I'm just
going to cover the dried porcini that's
very savoury it's got a real deep
incredible broth. So this has had about
20 minutes now and it's just frying away
nice and gently. I can just turn the gas
up a little bit. Hundred mls of Chianti
goes in there,
let it cook away. So while that's frying
away, add couple of leaves of bay leaves.
They can go in now let's just roughly
chop these mushrooms. These have
rehydrated now. It's only 20 grams guys
but it's big flavour. We're gonna go in
with the broth now guys. We're ending the
frying process now. Often there's kind of
little bits of grit. Discard that. We're
gonna go in with the tomatoes loosely bash
those up and they'll fall apart as they
cook. I'm just gonna put a swig of
boiling water in each tin. Just swill it
around. So tomatoes are in. Now lentils
they're brilliant they absorb flavour
just like meat would. So we're just going
to break up some of those tomatoes and
we're gonna turn the heat back down to
sort of medium. And I'm gonna let that
just kind of simmer and blip away for
about 30 minutes, and then I'll show you
what to do next. So let's have a little
taste. This is your opportunity to have a
little season. And the heat's off now, I
can put a little parsley through this
lovely ragout. You could use basil if you
wanted to, you can mix it up, or lovely
marjoram or something like that. In the
pan next to it I have some pasta. 80
grams per person. I've traded up from
white pasta spaghetti to whole wheat
pasta. Three times the amount of fibre in
whole wheat products. More B vitamins so
really really good. So what I'm gonna do
is steal a little bit of water. I'm just
adjusting the texture and I want it to
be nice and loose so it just catches the
pasta in a beautiful way. That pasta has
had it's sort of eight minutes now it's
ready and raring to go. So drain your
pasta and just keep a little bit of that
cooking water okay, and I'll show you why
in a minute. So I'm just gonna do a
couple of portions of this. Look at that.
Just mix it up. Parmesan. 15 grams or so.
The seasoning of the parmesan just brings
the lovely flavours together. Now it's
starting to get thick now right
and a bit claggy, and that's not cool. So
we're gonna add some of that cooking
water and that's going to keep it nice
and loose and gorgeous. So let's plate
this up. And before all the veggies start
telling me off saying that parmesan is
not vegetarian, this is actually a cheese
called Bella Lodi which is using a
vegetarian rennet and it's very similar
to Parmesan. So here we go
the lovely veggie bolognese. Get in there.
Mmm really good. Sort of slightly smoky
from the rosemary and from the porcini.
Sweet from the tomatoes and you got all
the veg that's kind of just cooked into
the lentils to be that kind of ragout-y
sort of texture that we love. But give it
a go. Super healthy and super delicious,
and at the end of the day that's what
it's all about.
Pasta is an ultimate comfort food and
I've given it the superfood treatment.
Teaming it up with a sauce celebrating
silky aubergines, sweet and tangy tomatoes
spiked with garlic, basil and chilli, it's
a comfort food dish with no guilt at all.
Really healthy, and it's all about loving
these. So I'm just gonna take the end off
the aubergine like that. Just get rid of
that little stalk. I'm gonna zip the aubergines
in half and crisscross the flesh
here just to let the steam in. And about
20-25 minutes of good steaming is all we
need to make these lovely aubergines
incredibly creamy and silky and elegant
and gorgeous. We're also gonna steam two
chillies but prick them first to stop them
exploding. Next lightly toast 40 grams of
pine nuts. This is a vegetarian dish but
we still want to get that hit of protein so
we're getting it from the ricotta, the
parmesan, and the pine nuts just kind of
badly pound them up so you get some
chunks you get some whole ones but also
you get some kind of mush as well. And
it's like a little
sprinkle at the end with a little
parmesan, some basil leaves. It's gonna
look and taste incredible. Finely slice
two cloves of garlic and remove about 30
grams worth of basil leaves from the
stalk. There is flavour and fibre. So this
is going to go into the base of my sauce
and there's a kind of sweetness in the
stalks that you get that you don't get
in the leaves. We're gonna put a
tablespoon of oil in a pan. Let's put in
our garlic and our basil stalks. Then I'm
gonna go very quickly in with two tins
of the lovely tomatoes. Pour the
tomatoes in, refill the tins with water,
and add to the pan. Lovely, so bring it to
the boil.
Get the heat nice and high and then
break up those tomatoes with the spoon,
and then we'll turn it down to a little
gentler medium heat. Let that bubble away
for 10 minutes. Time to cook your pasta.
And I'm gonna use the water that's been
steaming the aubergines. I'm using whole
wheat to ramp up the fibre. Let's check
our steamed veg. Look at that. You can
kind of feel already that they're
getting sort of absolutely silky smooth. Just
pull the chilies out, they're gonna be
nice and tender and sweet. Just take the
end off, use the tip of the knife and
just run it down the length of the chilli.
You can see how tender it is. You can open
it out like a book. You can see where the
skin and the flesh just separate and we
can just use the tip of the knife to get
rid of all the seeds. So that's the
really hot part of the chilli. What I do want
is the fruit, so if you see how
brilliantly this skin comes off when you
steam it. Absolutely beautiful. Next finely slice the chilli and add to
the pan. Stir that beautiful chilli in and what you can do to speed up the texture just use a
potato masher to just squash the
tomatoes like that. Now let's have a
little feel of the aubergine. You want it
just to fall apart so can you just tear
it. Yeah that's exactly what we want.
Gorgeous. And all I'm gonna do now is
simmer this. Let it all cook into each
other, almost casserole. And that is gonna
be beautiful.
Leave to reduce down for about 7 to 10
minutes. So it's looking good. Let's drain
the pasta it's had its time. This is
ricotta, it's a very very light cheese.
It's a wonderful carrier of flavours. You
can see it's bright and delicate and
gorgeous. We'll go in with the pasta, in
with the basil. I love the way the
ricotta just kind of curds and breaks up.
So gently does it.
This is for four people so it's generous. So
look if you're happy to give it a toss
that's even better. Although you do sort
of cover yourself with it but that's
alright. Just go over to a nice big
platter. Pour that lovely sauce over. It's
so generous so sweet, it's so beautiful.
Scatter with more bright punchy basil.
Then the toasted pine nut crumbs. And
then a light brush of parmesan from a
high all over the place, and that my
friends is one of my favourite pastas
it's really really good. So that really
is a super food classic pasta dish.
Gorgeous. It's got all of the food groups
dairy, protein, carbohydrates and your veg,
and look at it. Right let's get in there.
Let's have a go. Mmm the aubergine is silky
smooth a sweet tomato sauce and that hit of
chilli is really really good.
And you know what it's 470 calories. It's
really really good. Little side salad, and
you are laughing.
