As much as we love cooking, there is a challenge for all of us to produce healthy, delicious, and easy to prepare supper at the end of the day. This is even more challenging at weekdays, as we juggle the school run, work, daily chores. At times like these, I try to make the most of what I have in my fridge and kitchen and come out with something, hopefully a delicious bite to eat. At one of days like this, I opened my fridge and found some good olives (and we do eat a lot of olives), cherry tomatoes on the vine, garlic and dill. My family loves pasta and the combination of these made a wonderful, delicious pasta sauce, that you can prepare in no time (and even ahead of time), mediterranean way.
The ingredients might change depending on what I have at the moment – courgettes (zucchini), mushrooms, onions, some good pecorino cheese .. all would make a wonderful sauce and can save that weekday supper.
Serves 2-3
Preparation time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 15 minutes
350gr/12oz penne pasta
4 cloves of garlic, crushed and finely chopped
10-12 cherry tomatoes, quartered
3oml/2tablespoons of fresh dill, coarsely chopped
90gr/3oz Turkish or Kalamata black and green olives, pitted and halved
30ml/2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Sprigs of fresh dill to serve
Grated parmesan or pecorino romano to serve
Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan and sauté the garlic for a minute or two. Add the cherry tomatoes and olives, give them a good mix and cook for a further two minutes. Check the seasoning (olives can be quite salty) and season with salt, if needed, and black pepper
In the meantime, place the pasta in a saucepan of boiling water, add a little salt and a dash of olive oil. Stir occasionally and boil for about 10 minutes, until “al dente”. Towards the end of the cooking, take 2 tablespoons of the pasta’s cooking liquid and add to the pasta sauce, along with the dill. Mix well. Once pasta is cooked, drain the water and mix the pasta with the sauce.
Serve hot immediately, with sprigs of dill over the pasta and some grated pecorino or parmesan over the pasta, if you like.
Afiyet Olsun!
