Post first written in September 2013. Refreshed and updated November 2021.
This recipe makes a generous portion of pasta, dressed with olives, tomato puree and soft cheese. Very quick to make, just taking as long as the pasta does to cook through.
How To Make This Super Simple Pasta Recipe
- Cook the pasta in salted water until al dente.
- While it is cooking, simply mix the sauce ingredients together, excluding the peas.
- When the pasta is almost cooked, toss in the peas for a couple of minutes. Drain the pasta and peas, and mix in the sauce, leaving the sauce to warm through in the hot pan for a moment. That’s it!
If you are following the meal planner for week two, please make sure you measure the soft cheese, there is only just enough of that for the week.
What was this pasta recipe like?
The sauce coated a dish of pasta with abundance. The flavour was thick and intense with the tomato paste and olives, a strong taste which I really enjoyed. The recipe calls for peas, but as I have lots of runner beans at the moment, I used those. This is a definite keeper for me, I loved it. And it only took as long to prepare as the pasta did to cook!
What changes can I make?
- Vary the pasta shape you use.
- Swap the soft cheese for cream
- or a vegan option to make it vegan.
- Use black or green olives, or even stuffed ones.
- Change the peas to the same amount of any other vegetable
- Add a sprinkle of nuts
- Sprinkle parmesan on the top, or cheddar
Other Pasta Recipes You Might Like
Tuna and Pasta Salad with black olives, Meal Plan 9, 30p a serving
Or this delicious smoked salmon dish is from the other site I look after, CheapFamilyRecipes.co.uk
Ingredients
- 80 g pasta
- 40 g soft cheese
- 50 g tomato purée
- 25 g olives chopped
- 40 g peas
Instructions
- Cook the pasta in salted water until al dente - not super soft
- While the pasta is cooking, simply mix the sauce ingredients together, excluding the peas.
- When the pasta is almost cooked, toss in the peas for a couple of minutes.
- Drain the pasta and peas.
- Mix the sauce through and leave in the pan to warm through in the residual heat for a moment. Serve immediately
Equipment Needed
Notes
Variations
I loved this just as it was. If you are not a fan of the strong flavour, try using less tomato paste and fewer olives, or leave out the olives altogetherIf you have vegetables other than peas you would like to use up, this would accomodate all kinds of things.
- Grated carrot, swede or parsnip,
- some shredded spinach from the garden,
- runner beans like I used,
- broccoli or cauliflower (raw or cooked),
- fine chopped celery,
- sliced mushrooms, what have you really.
- If you think it will taste good, bung it in.
In the spring, there will be wild ransoms (wild garlic), they would be lovely in this. - Right now, you could forage mushrooms which would be very special, but please be careful that you know what you are picking.
I’ve got the biscuit recipe now – thank you. Rita, your story about the courgettes did make me smile.
DP and I have been together nearly as many years as you, and he continues to surprise me too sometimes.
He wouldn’t have pitta with carrot, soft cheese and lemon today. He’s decided he doesn’t like it now.
I have decided to do separate things if necessary as, like you, I like trying new things ALL the time. And now I’ve started blogging, I LOVE the recipe development side of it. DP either eats it, or he doesn’t. I’m having a great time!
I did fess up about the courgettes after a while and he was OK about it. I now put them in unpeeled and they are eaten. Even better now that they are fresh from the garden because I think he is secretly rather proud of me for growing some of our veg. Until recently he refused to eat stewed apple and it turned out that his mum didn’t take out the core before she cooked them, and it was the hard bits from the core he didn’t like – we’ve been married 40 years!!! Once I explained that don’t put the core in, he was fine with it. Sometimes it is so irrational. But I am fed up of not being able to try new things and of having to eat plain food so we have to find a compromise 🙂
They can be awkward blighters can’t they, maybe it comes with being a DB?
Whizzed up soups disguise a lot of things. Bubble and Squeak is a good idea, that is such mans food, he may concede that he likes it.
What would happen if you fessed up to the courgette thing? Would he try more things do you think, as he obviously survived that one, or be even more picky and maybe suspicious to boot?
I made pasta with conventional tomato sauce for DP last night, while I had the one posted. He did actually try a forkful of mine, which he won’t always, but said that it wasn’t as nice as his. I don’t think he realised he had actually given me a compliment by saying that his was nice, that is as rare as hens teeth!
Hi Jo
my husband, too, has set ideas and I sometimes think he just doesn’t want to try anything unfamiliar to him rather than the fact that he doesn’t like it, so I tried an experiment. He refuses to eat courgettes and carefully picks them out of anything I might add them to so one day I peeled them before I added them. He ate it all. Next time I didn’t peel them and he carefully…. you know what comes next. I’ve tried this with other things he won’t eat – I softened shredded white cabbage with onions and made a creamy sauce to go with chorizo. He ate it all without comment. I would never dream of serving anything he genuinely doesn’t like, but his insistence that he won’t eat something he’s never tried irritates me.
I’m working on how to disguise the savoy cabbage I have – I’m thinking a bubble and squeak using Jamie Oliver’s recipe with chestnuts – sounds interesting.
In my view it’s difficult enough to feed us on a restricted budget and I want to be able to make best use of any offers I find, particularly vegetables which can be expensive.
Ok, I’ve redone the link and it seems to be alright now. Let me know of you have any other problems
I’m very glad you are finding things you think may be useful. It’s very satisfying making a nice meal for not much isn’t it.
Oh dear, I had gremlins yesterday with the shopping list. I’ll have a look
Hi
Now that term has started again and I’m back in the usual daily routine, I’ve been going through the meal plan and also week one. They are wonderful. I’d always thought that I could keep to a very low budget but it seems that I have lots to learn still : ) Thank you!
Like you, my husband has set ideas on what he will and won’t eat. I would happily eat anything in the meal plans but he isn’t quite so easy to please. In the week one meal plan, I can’t get to the oaty biscuit recipe – just keeps coming up with an error message. Is this me or a gremlin in your system?