Spaghetti, Comfort Meal Recipes

Two beautiful and delicious recipes to try at home. Step up your game by making these homemade pasta dishes! The pesto sauce itself is so good you would want to make your own homemade pesto whenever you crave pesto pasta. I do like the idea of making and using fresh pastas but store-bought pasta is not that bad at all. In reality if you work in restaurants unless its a Michelin Italian kitchen, store-bought is always a time saver production wise. For me they are equally good, sauce is what will make or break any type of pasta you are cooking.

Here we are using spaghetti, some doesn’t like spaghetti because it’s plain long and just boring in shape. A smooth pasta never really take up so much sauce, the sauce will only cling and coat well a pasta if it has enough surface area. Anyway this spaghetti from a trusted brand is exemplary, let’s cook it al dente.

PESTO SPAGHETTI

400 g spaghetti freshly made or dry

pesto sauce 3 tbsp

50 g parmesan cheese, grated and extra shaved for topping

garlic 1 clove. minced

olive oil 2tbsp

COOKING METHOD:

Boil spaghetti in a pan according to packet’s cooking instruction. Drain water and set aside. saute garlic in a pan over medium high heat, add pesto sauce cook for 2 minutes. Add pasta and grated parmesan, toss until the pasta is well coated with the sauce. Serve!

HOMEMADE BASIL PESTO RECIPE:

5 cloves garlic, peeled

200 g fresh basil leaves

4 tbsp pine nuts

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup olive oil

Combine and blitz ingredients in a food processor. Emulsify olive oil until well combined.

Let’s move on to Crab Spaghetti dish! This recipe is one of my favourites. Crab serves as the key ingredient here therefor it”s very important to find good quality and fresh crab meat. Never settle for less.

CRAB SPAGHETTI:

4 tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, dice

3 cloves of garlic, slice thinly

red chilli or chilli flakes 1 tsp

sugar 1 tsp, to balance and bring out the flavour of the dish

cherry tomatoes 400 g

butter 115 g

spaghetti 200 g

salt and pepper to taste

crab meat white and brown 210g

Basil leaves handful

COOKING METHOD:

• Boil pasta according to package instruction.
• While pasta is cooking, saute shallot, onion, chilli flakes and tomatoes. Add crab and butter. Cook for another 3 minutes, season and check on your pasta!
• Cook pasta al dente, drain off the liquid and pour into the pan cook for 2 more minutes to incorporate flavour, add butter if you desire, season and serve!

AND VOILÀ! Two easy and simple recipes to add to your menus!