Macaroni Peas

A nice, relatively quick and quite unusual pasta sauce recipe. I (slightly) adapted this from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's excellent cookbook 'River Cottage Veg Every Day!'.. which as I have said on a number of occasions, is currently my favourite cookbook, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you don't have macaroni, any other pasta shape will do, really.

Lemony Avocado Pasta Sauce

A very quick, very simple, very delicious dinner. Imagine whacking guacamole on a pasta sauce and you've got the right idea. When blended, the avocado is very creamy and it -just- works. I found this recipe a while ago here, and have been meaning to cook it ever since. I modified it for my own ends (cooked the garlic rather than using it raw, and added chilli) but it's a pretty simple recipe so not much modification needed. You don't have to add cheese to this  (e.g. if you are vegan or worried about fat content)  but I love cheese so yeh that was always going to be done when I cooked this to be honest...

Minted Mushy Peas

This recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall's excellent book 'River Cottage Veg Everyday!' which has the honour of currently being my favourite cook-book (thanks go to my awesome sister for the excellent Christmas present). I used a red onion in this, and also added some dried mint, but other than that it follows his recipe pretty closely. Due to the onions, you need to blend the peas; if you don't have a blender or don't want to use onions, you could omit the onion and just mash the peas up instead. Either way, this is a guaranteed winner, and I very much enjoyed this with some pie and chips.

Slutty Spaghetti (aka Puttanesca)

This is one of my favourite recipes of all time. There are recipes for this all over the place, but I first came across it in one of my favourite vegetarian cookbooks - Linda McCartney's 'Recipes from around the world' which I found in a charity shop a few years ago and was one of the best £1.99 I've ever spent. It's quick and takes around 15 minutes from frying the garlic to serving with pasta. It also happens to taste amazing; not for the faint hearted, it's full of very strong flavours, and I always go massively over the top with the garlic and the chili. Words can't do it justice. This recipe serves 2, but I'll happily admit when I'm home alone and cooking for one, I often just have the whole sauce with my pasta because I can't get enough of it. It's my ultimate comfort food!