No matter what the time of year, or what the occasion, you can’t go wrong with a tasty pasta sauce.
Whether it’s a meal for two, a family dinner, or a winter evening meal… you can vary the dish using different types of pasta, different meats, no meat or by adding tasty extras like garlic bread or cheese.
There’s something for everyone.
I usually reach for a jar of pasta sauce, but after finding out how much fat can be found in a ready-made sauce, I decided to try and make my own from scratch.
Here are the ingredients I used:
2tbsp Rapeseed Oil
1 Small Onion
1 Clove of Garlic
2tbsp Tomato Puree
1tsp Schwartz Oregano
1tsp Red Wine Vinegar
400g tin of Pomodorini Cherry Tomatoes
I prepared all the ingredients — chopped the onion, crushed the garlic and measured out the tomato puree, vinegar and oil. Then I followed the recipe below:
STEP 1
Add the rapeseed oil to a pan and heat it over a low heat.
Add the onion to the pan and let it cook for around 5 minutes until soft, making sure the pan is stirred often so they don’t turn brown.
STEP 2
Add the crushed garlic clove to the pan. Then cook for a further minute.
STEP 3
Add the tomato puree and 1 tsp of oregano to the pan, for flavour. Cook for a further minute.
The oregano is the key ingredient which helps tie all of the flavours in the dish together.
STEP 4
Next add the red wine vinegar and the Pomodorini cherry tomatoes, plus a little pepper to season. Increase the heat slightly until the ingredients are heated through and allow it to simmer on a lower heat for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes the sauce should have thickened and is ready to eat.
STEP 5
If you want to add meatballs to the sauce, put them in the oven for 20 minutes (check the cooking times on the back of the packet).
5 minutes before the sauce is cooked through, bring some water to the boil in a separate pan and add your pasta.
STEP 6
When the sauce and meatballs are cooked, add the meatballs to the pan and leave on a low heat for a couple of minutes.
Stir the sauce regularly to cover the meatballs.
Drain the pasta, then add the pasta sauce with the meatballs to the dish. Add a decorative garnish to finish.
Cooking the recipe from scratch meant the dish tasted so much nicer and you could really taste the oregano.
I definitely want to try out more recipes using the Schwartz spice range – the flavour was incredible considering the small amount required in the recipe.
Schwartz have a whole range of different spices to choose from – these are all stocked at Tesco.
What’s your fave recipe to cook? Let me know!