PSB with pasta in basil and garlic
- cooked pasta
- Purple Sprouting Broccoli - I tend to keep the florets and the leafs and discard most of the stalk because I prefer cooking it very briefly.
- garlic - I used a LOT because I was trying to see off a cold and it ended up a bit strong
- fresh chives
- fresh basil
- parmesan cheese
- olive oil
- lemon juice
- fresh ground pepper and salt
This is, essentially, a quick version of pesto without the nuts. I took a large handful of fresh basil, a handful of fresh chives, a few garlic cloves, a dribble of olive oil and a dribble of lemon juice, pepper and salt, shoved it all into a pestle and mortar and beat it into a paste. Great stress relief.
I gently stir fried the broccoli in a little water until the florets start losing their purple colour, then added the paste, cooked for a short while, mixed with the pasta and served.
This tasted very fresh and healthy, the garlic was pretty strong but that's what I wanted. Yummy!
PSB with pasta in a cheese and bacon sauce
- cooked macaroni- PSB - again florets and leafs
- garlic
- fresh chives
- fresh tomatoes
- smoked bacon
- red Leicester cheese
- parmesan cheese
- plain flour
- butter
- milk
Often, to save washing up, I cook things in shifts using the same pan, but if you want you could cook all this simultaneously and end up with multiple dirty pans.
First I fried the bacon, then removed from the pan and set aside, wiped the bacon fat out of the pan.
Then I chopped the tomatoes into eighths, roughly chopped the chives and the garlic and put all this and the PSB into the pan with a little water and stir fried until the tomatoes were soft and the PSB green. Then I set this aside too.
In the same pan I melted a large knob of butter, then stirred in a heaped tbsp of plain flour. Stirred this into a smooth paste and removed from the heat. Stirred in milk until I had a smooth single-cream consistency then put back onto a very low heat. I sprinkled in a large handful of grated red Leicester and a little amount of grated Parmesan and stirred in until it all melted and became smooth.
Finally I added in all of the bacon (chopped into strips), pasta and the veg mix and stirred thoroughly to mix.
Muuuch less healthy than yesterday, but very tasty and good comfort food!
