As Mrs A mentioned last week, we love our food. In fact we’ve been known to plan whole days around food and eating…..really! So it only made sense to make food a regular post on TPW.

Did you catch Mrs A’s chicken and ginger soup last week?...delish.

In our house Mr M and I share the cooking, we both love to cook so don’t see it as a particular chore but we have fallen into a pattern. Mr M will take the reins at the weekend and I tend to cook the daily meals Monday-Friday, not necessarily boring meals but standard recipes I know like the back of my hand. We have about 15-20 recipes like these which we just rotate and every now and then we find a great one to add to the list. Mrs A’s soup from last week is one of those recipes we will be adding to the list.

The recipe I am sharing today is the easiest and cheapest recipe on our list. We call it a storecupboard recipe, I usually have the ingredients for it any given week and it’s our fall back recipe when the fridge is looking a bit empty and we can’t quite bear the thought of a mid week dash to Tesco’s.

Puttanesca – In Italian this means ‘Tarts’ pasta, ‘saucy’ eh? Pun totally intended.

Ingredients 

Tin of anchovies
Handful of black pitted olives
Tablespoon of capers
Tin of tuna
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Large clove of garlic
½ teaspoon of chilli flakes
Packet of spaghetti or Linguini

1. First off drain the oil from the anchovies into a saucepan and fry the garlic in the oil until it’s just about to turn golden.

2. In the meantime chop up the olives, anchovies and capers. Add this mixture and the chilli flakes to the garlic and oil and fry until the anchovies have melted. Add the drained tin of tuna and tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce is hot. If you like the tomatoes sweeter cook the sauce on a low heat for 30mins.

3. Mix with cooked pasta and serve. If you’re feeling fancy you can add a garnish of basil and a large glass of red wine.

In total this recipe costs £1.26 per serving another reason to love it. The recipe above makes 2 really large portions with lots of leftovers for lunch but will easily feed four if you add a side salad and maybe some garlic bread.

Lots of love

TPW x

Welcome to Tuck In Tuesday, our new Tuesday series sharing our favourite recipes, from the perfect roast chicken to cute cupcakes! We both love food. Fact. We spend many a Saturday night cooking delicious 3 course meals for each other and our lovely hubbies so we thought we would share! And of course, cooking and baking epitomises the so called Perfect Wife!

For me learning to cook has been a huge part of my journey in attempting to be The Perfect Wife. When I first set up home with Mr A I could just about cook an egg but 6 years later, and after many helpful hints from the man himself, I can rustle up a roast dinner with perfect gravy on a Sunday afternoon with my eyes closed – OK, slight exaggeration but you get my drift. Preparing delicious meals for my husband, friends and family is one of my most favourite things to do. If it’s yours too, then keep reading…

On the menu today is Chicken and Ginger Chinese Soup inspired by our fav fashionista Mr Gok Wan. I have to say I’m not a huge Gok fan but I do love a cookery programme so I tuned in to watch his series and was pleasantly surprised. Gok made this soup with pork but Mr A and I put our own little stamp on it and swapped pork for chicken and added a red chilli. It’s so simple but so tasty and if, like me, you’ve over-indulged at the weekend and feel the need for something healthy, this will definitely hit the spot.

Ingredients

750ml chicken stock

1 carrot, chopped

1 onion, cut in half

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

2 spring onions, whites bruised, greens chopped

a 4cm piece of fresh ginger, one half peeled and cut into matchsticks, the other half unpeeled and bruised

1 clove of garlic, peeled and bruised

salt and ground white pepper

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1 chicken breast, very thinly sliced

1 teaspoon light soy sauce

1–2 bunches of mature spinach, stalks removed

2 handfuls rice noodles Method

Add the onion, carrot, garlic and the bruised ginger to a pan of boiling chicken stock along with the greens of the spring onions.

Add to the the chicken breast whole. Simmer until chicken is cooked through.

In the meantime add the spinach and rice noodles, uncooked, to your serving bowls. (Don’t panic, the boiling stock will cook the noodles!)

Sprinkle with the ginger matchsticks, the chopped red chilli and the chopped spring onions. When the chicken is cooked take it out of the stock and cut into thin strips.

Add the chicken strips to the ingredients in the serving bowls.

Strain the stock and pour into the prepared serving bowls. And there you have it…

How easy was that?! Hope you enjoy. I certainly did!

Lots of “Tuck In” Love

TPW