Food Riot

Unless you’ve just painted a big “X” on a busy London intersection, you are unlikely to be wealthy enough to eat delicious expensive gourmet food every evening. With this in mind, I would like to share with you this recipe that has the double benefit of being both cheap and quick. It is also pretty elastic in that with the addition of just a few more cheap ingredients, you can feed many more people.

Ingredients

• 1 packet of frankfurters, chopped diagonally into 1 inch chunks
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• Some chopped mushrooms
• A stick of celery, chopped fine
• Some Italian seasoning (or fresh herbs if you’re posh – rosemary, oregano, basil)
• Some chopped bacon (if you have any – not a disaster if you don’t)
• Some  short pasta – penne, conchiglie or similar
• Some passata (again, not critical, but good if you have it)
• Some pesto (not vital, but its good to always have a jar in the fridge)
• Some chopped black olives

Method

• In a little olive oil, fry off the onions, the garlic, the celery and the bacon until the onions are golden and soft like the sun-kissed breasts of a… never mind.
• Get the pasta going – boiling water, salt, a dash of oil, pasta – you know the drill
• Add the chopped franks and fry until they start going a bit brown
• Throw in the Italian seasoning/ herbs and allow it all to fry for a bit…
• Add the chopped tomatoes and bring to the boil
• Add some passata if the sauce looks a little insipid
• Slow the heat to a gentle simmer for 5 minutes
• Toss in a pinch of sugar – this takes the acidic edge off the tomatoes
• Just before serving, stir in a couple of spoons of pesto
• Toss in the chopped black olives
• Mix with the pasta

The above is really just a guide. This recipe is a real fridge raid – if you have any other ingredients such as peppers, chop them and add them. If you are suddenly faced with more people to feed than you intended, don’t collapse into a state of hysteria, just do more pasta. Don’t forget to season the whole lot and remember, taste, taste, taste…

And if you don’t have pasta, do rice instead. If you don’t have chopped tomatoes, use Cream of Mushroom soup – it creates a whole new dish.