Oven-Baked Vegetable Noodles with Ginger and Sesame Oil

I hate stir-frying. I hate woks. I hate stir-fried food made at home. I hate all 'home-cooked Chinese food'. I love Chinese takeaways.

Chinese takeaways are not going to win Michelin stars, but the Chinese know how to cook food that caucasians like to eat. I'm talking about bright red crispy stuff in gloopy sauces. I'm talking about fried stuff with noodles. I'm talking about rice with bright stuff in it. I don't know how it's done and I don't care. I just love it (especially when it comes with a bag of free prawn crackers sitting on the top of the brown paper sack already leaking grease down the delivery driver's arm).

I'm a really good cook, and I love buying exotic produce from my Asian grocer, but I CANNOT MAKE CHINESE FOOD. I have a Chinese friend who has taught me how to make Chinese food , but I CANNOT MAKE CHINESE FOOD. So now I (almost) stop trying.

The problem is not the ingredients, but the technique. How many times have I wielded my wok and followed my good friend Yang's instructions to 'hey, only cook the vegetables for a few minutes!'? Yes Yang, after I remove the beautiful vibrant veg/meat/rice/noodles from the wok and put it onto the plate it starts leaching water until I have a 3cm pool at the bottom of the plate. The meat is hard and tasteless. The noodles have formed a crust on the bottom of the wok and are now scraped-off to form a stupid non-traditional gnarly crispy noodley garnish for the top of my crappy dish (I won't waste a scrap of food for any reason ever). What the eff?

The answer: Ditch the wok. Now by roasting everything in the oven, I just sit back and drink wine while waiting for my delicious dinner. No waiting for the wok to 'heat until blistering'. No getting covered in splats of oil. And definitely no watery slop.

The key is to oven cook the veg until all the water has been driven off and then keep adding things until everything is amalgamated. It is total stupidity that you must cook the veg for two minutes 'to keep all the vitamins in'. You want vitamins? Take a pill. For me, I want it to taste good.

Oh and while on the subject of taste? Fresh ginger and garlic with soy and sesame oil is a far better alternative to the stir-fry sauce nonsense served up in sachets in supermarket aisles (what is that brown goo? Wood stain?). Simple is always best - unless you're ordering food from your local takeaway, or you happen to have an Asian friend prepared to make you dinner.

This is no joke - the whole dinner comes in at £1.50 per very generous serving and is fairly close to rivaling my local Chinese takeaway for flavour. The recipe here is basic, but you can add some oven roasted meat or fish to the top. I made some salmon with mine and plonked it on top before serving. Delish.

Now, if only I could find a way to oven roast myself a few free prawn crackers...

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

Thumb of ginger, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
500g mixed stir-fry vegetables
1 tablespoon olive oil
400g ready-cooked egg noodles
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil

Preheat oven to 220c. Mix together the ginger, garlic and vegetables and arrange in an even layer on a non-stick baking tray, then sprinkle with the olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes until well cooked (turning a few times), and then add the noodles, soy sauce and sesame oil, and mix everything together until well amalgamated. Bake for a further 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Spaghetti Mr Ribeye

I was so jealous that my wife has her own favourite dish named after her ('Linguine Mrs Ribeye', no less), that I made up a dish and named it after myself.

Ta-da! SPAGHETTI MR RIBEYE!!!

If I'm honest, I'm slightly perturbed that my wife didn't make the dish for me and name it in my honour, but, well... she can't cook. At all. So I'll take one on the chin - and my tastebuds will thank me later.

Today's dish involves feta cheese and chillies - one of my favourite cheeses and my all-time favourite vegetable (or 'fruit' if you're pedantic). Actually, chillies may just be my favourite food of all time. I sometimes eat them whole on their own for an after-work snack with a glass of wine, cut-up raw on houmous, salads and burgers, or pickled on almost every other dish. But put chillies with feta cheese, and you have an atomic-super-duper-frenzy of a taste explosion. I'm getting a bit warm just thinking about it...

Smooth rich young cheese with fiery chilli. Mmm. Actually hold on... What if I were to roast some of the chillies to bring out their sweetness, and then have some raw ones on top to freshen the dish up? What an idea!

Regular Potless readers will notice that I have married together feta with roasted chillies in a dish before - in my Feta and Roasted Jalapeno Burger - but these days I am more of a veggie pasta than a burger guy (actually that's a lie; if I wasn't such a 'potential fatso', I would eat a burger a day).

And so it was born. The best pasta dish this side of Napoli, and the hottest dish this side of the sun. In a word...

'Fantabuloustasticerrificilliantissimo'. As they definitely say in Italy. Well, most days probably.

As ever, with my careful eye on the purse strings, this dish comes in at a very reasonable £2 per serving. Another reason why this is probably my signature recipe.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

3 whole large red chillies
3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
1 x 400g tin of whole Italian tomatoes in their own juice
1 teaspoon of dried oregano, plus extra for dusting
Pinches of salt and pepper
Cooked spaghetti (250g uncooked weight), to serve
100g feta cheese, crumbled
2 red chillies, sliced, to garnish

To a blisteringly hot pan, add the chillies and oil and fry until the skins are slightly charred and roasted, then set aside until needed. To the oily pan, add the garlic and gently fry until it has the merest tinge of golden colour. Add the tomatoes, oregano, seasoning and about a quarter of the tomato tin filled up with water, and cook rapidly until the sauce is thick and unctuous (20 minutes approx). Add the spaghetti to the sauce (not the other way around) and mix to coat thoroughly. Top with the feta cheese, then the roasted and then the raw chillies. Lightly dust the dish with the extra oregano. Serve immediately.

Razor Clam Spaghetti Vongole

Every now and again I pop up to Church Street market and see what's new in. The market is a bit crappy and very functional - no Portobello Road antiques or Marylebone farmers market Jerusalem artichokes here; because this market is for local people, buying day-to-day food at knock-down prices. There is, of course, the odd exotic bargain to be purchased, which is the sort of exception which makes the rule.

At one of the three fish stalls dotted down the street (it's the one outside the manky pub where my dad bought me my first beer - I was about twelve. How times have changed - now, twelve year olds take drugs, probably) the fishmonger normally selling 'four bream or sea bass for a tenner', happened to have some fresh razor clams in at £8 per kilo.

I've never cooked razor clams before, but how hard can it be? Just steam them like other clams and eat them, right?

Well, you could. But then you would be eating a ton of black gunk that sits in their guts, and your dinner would be ruined. Therefore a little dissection is going to be needed between par-cooking them, and gently re-heating them in the sauce. That being said, the meats are sweet, tender and delicious, and the shells make a fantastic garnish talking point. As you can see from the photo, I re-assembled the cleaned cooked clams back into their shells 'for their close-up, daahling...'

Oh, one thing, you may get a bit attached to their antics, which may make them hard to kill without feeling a bit guilty and sad. I bought the razors, put them in a big pot of fresh water to purge them, and then watched as their little noses poked out of their shells to check out their new environment. Inquisitively, I picked up a clam, and it spat a stream of water six feet across my kitchen! Brilliant!

Oh well, can't be a wuss about these things. As much as I quite liked having some molluscan pets for an hour or two, their necessary despatch ended up with me and Mrs Ribeye enjoying one of my best ever home-cooked seafood dishes. And so easy to prepare too, with very few ingredients to make an authentic Italian vongole.

As far as vongole is concerned, the dish should be 'blanco', not thickly red from tomatoes (the way they always seem to serve it in 'Italian-style restaurants' Or tins.) No, the dish should be light and fresh, with a hint of spice from a fresh chilli, fragrant from a light white wine, and carpeted in fresh parsley.

Cost wise, razor clams are about half the price in Church Street than anywhere else in London, I reckon. For two people, 750g is adequate - about 4-5 clams each. The dish may look fantastic and taste luxurious, but at £3 per serving, it's another Potless miracle.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

750g razor clams, in their shells
75ml olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 fat red chilli, finely chopped
125ml dry white wine
300g cooked spaghetti
Handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Sea salt and black pepper

Wash the clams in plenty of cold water and leave to stand for an hour or two, then drain. In the meantime, in a hot pan, fry the garlic and chilli in the olive oil until soft. Add the wine to the pan and bring to the boil, and then  add the drained clams and cover the pan. Cook the clams for 4 minutes until they open, then remove from the pan. Leave the pan on the heat, to reduce the cooking liquor by a third, while you remove the intestinal sac and black gunk from the clams with a sharp knife. Chop the clam meats into bite-sized pieces and add them to the clam liquor with the cooked spaghetti. Toss everything together and transfer to serving plates. Carpet with the parsley and  serve immediately (you can place some of the meats into a couple of reserved shells, for aesthetic effect, as pictured).

Spaghetti with King Prawns and Chilli

Mrs Ribeye and I are quite the fans of Gordon Ramsey's US series Hell's Kitchen ('IT'S RAAAW!!! SHUT IT DAHHHNNN YOU DONKEYS!!!').

It's good entertainment, but not exactly a master class in fine dining. Most of the food that the brow-beaten contestants have to produce is pan-fried this and sauteed that - basically anything that you can cook or reheat in five minutes - while the crusty-faced chef bollocks them for not having enough sear on their scallops (ouch).

At some point I will attempt to make Ramsey's lamb wellington as it looks quite delish, but I will have to save that treat for the weekend as the wife and I only consume bird and cat food during the week. Yup, we're still on the weekday veg and fish diet. I'm not sure it's doing us a whole lot of good - especially as on Friday to Sunday we turn into the great white shark from Jaws - but the school night food bill certainly is a whole lot cheaper.

Today's dish looks at first glance like a dear one, but Tesco has raw jumbo king prawns on offer at half price, so I thought I'd try a Hell's Kitchen special - the seafood spaghetti. Of course, I probably haven't got the recipe exactly right, but then I am not constrained to one pan, three ingredients and five minutes like the dopey bozo 'chefs' on TV. Where do Ramsey's scouts get these guys from? Starbucks?

Oh, one thing about this dish: I loved it, but the wife prefers Linguine Mrs Ribeye - a similar pasta dish but with no prawns, and made with mozzarella and basil instead. There's no bloody pleasing some people. She'd get on well with Ramsey (oh, and I would have saved a few quid too).

Oh and one last thing (absolutely the last thing): I use dried chillies in the sauce and fresh chillies to garnish. To set off the dried chillies, I cook the sauce with fresh finely chopped red sweet pepper and so I have three different pepper textures in the dish: Dried chilli, cooked pepper and raw chilli. How very cheffy of me.

Because of today's super bargain shellfish, this dish came in at a wallet-friendly £2 per serving. An absolute bargain, whatever Mrs Ribeye might say.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 red pepper, finely chopped

1 x 400g tin of Italian tomatoes with a half tin of water

1 teaspoon of dried oregano

1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes

Salt and pepper

250g raw king prawns

300g cooked spaghetti

Fresh chilli rings, to garnish

In a hot pan, fry the garlic and pepper in the olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes, water, oregano and dried chilli and cook until reduced to a thick sauce. Season to taste. Add the prawns to the sauce and clamp down the lid to allow the prawns to poach gently in the residual heat. When cooked (the prawns will have turned coral pink), add the spaghetti to the pan and mix well. Serve. Garnish with the fresh chilli rings.

Pasta with Gruyere, Pine Nuts, Basil and Garlic-infused Olive Oil

My wife is quite a complicated creature. At times she is a complete pushover (a description she hates - but who cares? She's a bit of a pushover), and at other times a complete P in the A. It can be a bit of a minefield working out which Mrs Ribeye will be coming through the door, and so the best policy is to tread fairly carefully, then try a bit of a joke at her expense before either apologising profusely or hammering my (frankly hilarious) point home. Gotta love marriage.

One way to convert an on-edge tiger to an affectionate pushover kitten, is to keep them happy with their favourite grub. Mrs Ribeye's catnip of choice is anything pasta-centric, hence Linguine 'Mrs Ribeye'. Today's dish is my newest invention, and quite frankly, it's a bit of a hit - which means I'm off the hook after winding her up just a little too much when she got home, after she spent the day telling her slightly (as in, majorly) diva-ish colleague, Dali, off all day.

Think of this pasta dressing as a kind of un-blitzed pesto, but made with gruyere instead of parmesan. If my friend Kumar had not resisted me making fondue last weekend, I wouldn't have had so much bloody gruyere in the fridge, so probably would have made this dish with whatever other cheese I had lying around - but gruyere is such a deliciously fab melting cheese, that in a way I'm delighted I have a large block (or two) in the fridge ready to use in other things.

I have chosen mushroom tortellini (not home made, of course, who could be bothered?) as my pasta, because Mrs Ribeye is quite the fan of stuffed pasta shapes (I think it's a Russian thing - she loves pelmeni), but this dish would be great with linguine or spaghetti, or even penne. It's dead easy to make and quick too - which means more time listening to the wife's 'interesting' work tales and less time hiding in the kitchen. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Oh, and apart from being easy and delicious, this dish is cheap too: £2.75 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of pine nuts
1 x 300g pack of tortellini, cooked as per the instructions
Handful of fresh basil leaves
100g gruyere cheese, shaved, using a potato peeler
Salt and pepper

Mix the oil and garlic together and set aside to infuse. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until golden and set aside. Cook the tortellini and transfer to a serving dish. Dress with the garlic-infused oil (taking care not to add the raw garlic to the dish) and garnish with the pine nuts, basil and gruyere shavings. Season to taste and serve immediately.

Linguine 'Mrs Ribeye'

Moderation moderation moderation.

I don't know why, but for many years I had an obsession with cooking everything either very very slowly - stews/sauces; or very very quickly - fish, roast chicken/beef/lamb. I somehow thought that all behaviour had to be polarised or it was considered dull.

This attitude towards extreme behaviour carried on into my life as a DJ (my mixing was of the 'slap it in and out' school), my social life ('live hard, work hard, party hard'), my professional life ('I haven't become a millionaire today? Boring') and my relationships ('You don't like my taste in music? Get out!').

However, as the years advanced, the yearning to become moderate has taken any of my hyperbolic emotions away from me. I now enjoy partying 'most of the night long'. I am happy in my work - whatever my financial status. My DJ'ing is smoother to listen to (and, er,  better), and my cooking is simpler, with more emphasis on  treating each recipe with individual care rather than trying to impose my blanket techniques on all my dishes. Oh and I have now learnt to bicker. I used to be fiery but as I have now hit my forties I find it far more agreeable to resolve conflicts with whinges and whines, rather than full scale war. There are less casualties.

Today's dish is a great example of how far I've come as a cook. I used to take two hours to slow cook the hell out of the ingredients to make a spaghetti sauce, until I realised that slow cooking leaves flavours dead and dull. So now, I take minutes to prepare my sauce and the results are superb. Fresh, vibrant tomatoe-y goodness, topped with a whole cubed mozzarella and enough freshly picked basil leaves to make them more of a central feature than a herby afterthought. Mrs Ribeye absolutely adores this dish and so I have named it after her.

This dish is simple, cheap and delicious. This is not, however, the reason I named it after my wife. Cost-wise, you're only looking at £2 per serving.

A quick note on the ingredients:

1. Use a LOT of garlic - this sauce is a celebration of the mighty bulb (but remember to remove the central bitter stem from each individual clove before chopping).

2. Use tinned WHOLE plum tomatoes, and then break them up later once the sauce has nearly finished cooking - the ready chopped ones emit their seeds into the sauce too early, creating bitterness.

3. Use a LOT of olive oil - the dish won't be greasy, I promise.

4. DON'T stir the mozzarella into the sauce - it's nice to have the slowly softening creamy chunks against the richness of the sauce.

5. Use LOTS of fresh basil - think of it as a salad garnish rather than a herb.

6. Use LINGUINE if you can, not spaghetti - it's somehow meatier and holds the sauce better.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

3 cloves of garlic
3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 x 400g tin of whole Italian tomatoes in their own juice
1 teaspoon of dried oregano, plus extra for dusting
Pinches of salt and pepper
Cooked linguine (250g uncooked weight), to serve
2 balls of mozzarella cheese, cubed
Large handful of fresh basil leaves, for sprinkling

In a pan on high heat, add the garlic and oil and gently fry until it has the merest tinge of golden colour. Add the tomatoes, oregano, seasoning and about a quarter of the tomato tin filled up with water, and cook rapidly until the sauce is thick and unctuous (20 minutes approx). Add the linguine to the sauce (not the other way around) and mix to coat thoroughly. Transfer to serving dishes and top with the mozzarella cubes and basil leaves. Lightly dust the dish with the extra oregano. Serve immediately

No Fuss, Quick and Easy Spaghetti Bolognese

My wife, Mrs Ribeye, loves a good old spag bol, and this week she really deserves it.

Bless her, she's had to put up with my sudden fanatical interest in the Euro football tournament, including watching two matches a day (that's three hours!), followed by my endless worrying about whether England will make it through the group stages of the competition, into the knockout rounds.

I'm not always like this. In fact, apart from my youth, when I thought it would be fun for a couple of years to support my local team, Arsenal (it wasn't), I have found watching football a pointless task. Watching other people having fun for money? And people pay to see this?

But like religion, sometimes it's nice that other people make the effort to follow it, so that I don't have to. Take football. If there were no supporters, then I wouldn't have the Euros to enjoy; and religion: without it, I wouldn't have anything to blame for all the woe we humans pile onto each other in its various names and guises.

Anyway, I have all faith that England will beat (or at least draw) with Ukraine tomorrow night, to get through to the quarter-finals. If so, then Mrs Ribeye will have to put up with a bit more of my hand-wringing and obsessive newspaper-reading for signs of rival teams injuries, sending-offs and in-fighting; and to see whether Roy Hodgson will dare to play Wayne Rooney in a very positive 4-3-3 formation with Carroll and Welbeck (go on Roy, you know you want to).

By the end of this tournament, I couldn't care less about any of this of course - until the World Cup in 2014, which will mean a making Mrs Ribeye a lot of her favourite grub to compensate.

Which brings me onto this recipe.

Spaghetti bolognese is such an evocative dish. It's really just a hamburger stew with pasta, but for some reason, it is revered by my wife as the ultimate in 'comfort haute cuisine' fare (oh who am I kidding? I love it too). It's great in this incarnation, and even better when made into my Lasgana Pasta Bake.

To save a huge amount of time, I bought a bag of ready-made soffrito (chopped raw celery, carrot and onion) from Waitrose on the Edgware Road and simply combined all of the ingredients in the pan, without performing all of the regular stage preparation - browning the beef/softening the vegetables etc. The result is great, and because you've cut down on the work, you can spend more time swearing at the TV screen.

The ready-made soffrito cost 99p for a 400g, which is cheaper than buying the individual vegetables - which means that this recipe comes in at a very reasonable £2 per serving.

Serves 2-3


INGREDIENTS:

400g ready-made soffrito
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
400g ground beef
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 bay leaves
400g can of chopped plum tomatoes, plus half a can of water
Pinches of salt and black pepper
Fresh basil leaves, to serve
300-400g cooked spaghetti or linguine, to serve


Mix everything (not the pasta or the fresh basil) together in a saucepan and cook uncovered, on a moderate heat, until the sauce is thick and unctuous (approx 1 hour, maybe a little more), making sure you stir every now and then to prevent sticking. Sprinkle with the fresh basil leaves and serve with the pasta.

The Best Ever Cheese, Bacon, Mushroom ('Mac-Mac-Cheese') Gourmet Pasta Bake

I love macaroni cheese. Not the molten-Cheez-wizz-on-tiny-macaroni type of mac and cheese, but the type of macaroni cheese that by rights should be called a 'fusilli carbonara pasta bake', or something.

The reference in the title to 'Mac-Mac-Cheese' comes from my sister's son, my nephew, Rocky. It doesn't matter what I put in this dish, if it has pasta and cheese in it, he calls it a macaroni cheese (AKA 'mac-mac-cheese'). Even if it contains truffles or foie gras. Or bananas.

Oh, the other thing: It's not really a 'bake' - you just fold the sauce through the pasta and grill the top with a delicious breadcrumb and parmesan crust. Sorry, I don't make up the rules.

In today's recipe, the humble mac and cheese has evolved beyond convenience food to become a gourmet dinner party creation involving pancetta, mature cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese, large field mushrooms, fresh garlic and extra virgin olive oil. If it was up to Mrs Ribeye, we would eat this every week - but then she'd be married to a fatty, which she wouldn't like so much - so once a month it is, maximum.

To keep the cholesterol down to it's bare minimum, I make my cheese sauce with extra virgin olive oil instead of butter, and all those good fatty acids help me feel less guilty about the mountain of cheese I add. Plus I find that it makes a smoother and more authentic Italian style sauce. It's so delicious, that you'll never want to use butter again.

Buy the best pancetta, cheese, olive oil and pasta that you can find, and this still comes in well under budget at £2 per serving.

Serve with a green salad tossed with a sharp vinaigrette dressing, to cut the richness of this deliciously cheesy dish.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

500g dried rigatoni, fusilli or penne pasta
25g of salt
25ml of olive oil
200g pancetta or streaky bacon, cut into 1cm dice
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
200g mushrooms, cut into 2cm chunks
75ml extra virgin olive oil
75g plain flour
500ml milk
Pinches of salt and pepper
200g cheddar cheese, grated
50g breadcrumbs
50g parmesan cheese

Boil the pasta, with the 25g of salt, in plenty of water. While the pasta is cooking, fry the pancetta, onion, garlic and mushrooms with the 25ml of oil, on a moderate heat, until translucent. In a separate pan, on a moderate heat, cook the 75ml of oil with the flour until you have a smooth paste (approx 5 minutes). Add the milk in 50ml batches until you have incorporated all of the milk and you have a lump-free sauce. Add the salt and pepper and keep cooking until the sauce has slightly thickened (approx 15 minutes), stirring to prevent burning. Take the sauce off the heat and stir in the cheese until it has melted and the sauce is thick. Add the pancetta mix to the sauce and fold through. Drain the pasta and add the sauce to the pasta pan. Fold the sauce through the pasta and transfer the mix to a roasting dish. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese over the surface. Place under a hot grill until the top is golden and crunchy (approx 5 minutes). Serve with a green salad.

My Ridiculously Easy, Emergency Version of Spaghetti with Italian Meatballs

Every now and again, you need a super quick, no-fuss, saviour recipe which will save you having to buy a take-away. And here it is:

I have just discovered (completely by accident) the best and easiest way to cook meatballs. I couldn't be bothered to make a sauce and I doubly couldn't be bothered to make meatballs, but Mrs Ribeye was on her way home from work and I had to think - and work - quick. Just add dry flavourings to ground beef, add no flavourings to a carton of passata, and hey presto - dinner in minutes.

This recipe shouldn't theoretically be any good - but it's a revelation. Try it. It's amazing. No fresh herbs, no fresh vegetables and no intricate sauce ingredients - the flavours from the meatballs leach into the sauce, creating a fabulous flavour.

If people are coming over in an hour, and I haven't started cooking - and I'm in dire need of a shower (as always) - I just whack everything on to cook, go about my ablutions and when I get dressed, I just put the pasta on to boil, ready for the meatballs.What could be easier?

Do it my way and this is the cheapest (and most delicious) version of the old Italian favourite EVER. £1.50 per serving. Bellissimo!

Serves 4

Super-Quick Italian Meatballs

INGREDIENTS:

750g ground beef
50g breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon dried mixed Italian herbs
Pinches of salt and pepper
1 teaspoon each of garlic granules, onion granules and dried chilli flakes
1 egg

Mix everything together and form into golfball-sized meatballs. Plop into the tomato sauce to cook (1 hour approx). Serve with the tomato sauce and spaghetti.

Here is a picture of the meatballs before I cooked them in the tomato sauce:

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Super-Quick Tomato Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

750ml passata (sieved Italian tomatoes)
500ml water
50ml extra virgin olive oil
Pinches of salt and pepper

500g cooked spaghetti to serve

In a saucepan on a moderate heat, place all of the ingredients. Add the meatballs and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally until cooked, and the water has evaporated, leaving a thick, unctuous sauce. Serve with the spaghetti.

Chicken Milanese with Spaghetti in Tomato and Mushroom Sauce

This dinner is a favourite of Mrs Ribeye's and very easy to make. We love Italian food and used to frequent La Porchetta in Muswell Hill in north London, before the 4'11" waiter started getting too big for his size 3 boots and favoured barking angrily at his customers as a form of communication. What an idiota.

Anyway, since we don't live in north London any more, the situation has resolved itself, and we are now on the look out for a local pizza/pasteria - but in the meantime we sate our pasta cravings with this dish.

Veal is generally the correct meat for this recipe, but chicken is a very handy and much cheaper substitute. All-in, this comes to £2.50 per serving. If I make this dish with veal instead, the cost doubles - but on occasion I don't mind. Valentine's day is Tuesday - maybe Mrs Ribeye and I will take a walk around Marylebone and find a new place to eat out, or (more likely) maybe I'll spend a little extra at my local butcher and go a bit over my Potless budget.

Serves 4

Chicken Milanese

INGREDIENTS:

4 chicken breasts
4 tablespoons of flour
Pinches of salt and pepper
2 eggs, beaten
100g breadcrumbs or matzo meal
Sunflower or vegetable oil, for frying

Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of clingfilm and gently flatten them out with a rolling pin, ensuring that they each stay in one piece. Mix the flour and the salt and pepper together and coat the chicken breasts. Shake off the excess. Dip the chicken in the egg, followed by the breadcrumbs. In a frying pan, on a moderate heat, fry the chicken breasts until golden and crunchy on the outsides and cooked through the middle (15 minutes approx), turning once. Serve with the spaghetti in tomato and mushroom sauce.

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Spaghetti in Tomato and Mushroom Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

250g mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Pinches of salt and pepper
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
400g tin of chopped Italian tomatoes
300ml water

500g cooked spaghetti, to serve

In a saucepan with the lid on, fry the mushrooms, onion, garlic, oil, salt and pepper and oregano together until all the liquid has evaporated and the mixture is soft and translucent (20 minutes approx). Add the tomatoes and water and cook on a low heat, uncovered now, until the water has evaporated and the sauce is thick and unctuous (1 hour approx). Mix the sauce into the cooked spaghetti, and serve.

Chinese Won Ton 'Spaghetti with Meatballs'

I really like messing around with recipes and combining cultures - Beijing meets Bologna. These won ton meatballs make a fantastic partner to stir-fried vegetable noodle 'spaghetti'. Try it - you'll see.

Cheap as chips and twice as nice. £2 per serving, makes this a fantastic mid-week meal for me, Mrs Ribeye and our friends.

Serves 4

Won Ton 'Meatballs'

INGREDIENTS:

500g pork mince
20ml rice wine or dry sherry
30ml sesame oil
30ml sunflower or vegeatble oil
2 tablespoons of plain flour
1 egg, beaten
6 spring (salad) onions, finely chopped
Pinches of salt and pepper
100g raw prawns

Mix the ingredients together (not the prawns) into a smooth paste. Take a prawn and encase it in a ball of the pork paste to a 4cm diameter. Refrigerate the won tons for 2 hours to firm-up. When the vegetable noodles are almost ready, steam the won tons until cooked (15 minutes approx). Serve on top of the vegetable noodle 'spaghetti'.

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Vegetable Noodle 'Spaghetti'

INGREDIENTS:

1kg stir fry vegetables
Thumb of ginger, minced
2 cloves of garlic minced
25ml sunflower or vegetable oil
1kg pre-cooked egg noodles
50ml dark soy sauce
25ml sesame oil

4 spring (salad) onions, finely chopped, to serve

In a blisteringly hot large pan or wok, fry the vegetables, ginger and garlic in the oil, until translucent (10 minutes approx). Add the noodles, soy sauce and sesame oil and fold through the vegetables until the noodles have re-heated.
Garnish with the chopped spring onions and serve with the won ton 'meatballs' on top

Pig's Trotters in Chinese Broth with Noodles

I have never bought and cooked pig's trotters before, but I certainly do love eating them. For my first foray into trotter territory, I have decided to adapt a roast pork (char sui) noodle soup recipe, which I ate in Hong Kong a couple of years ago - to rapturous delight.

Use beef bones and chicken or vegetable stock to make the broth, because I think that using pork bones and pork stock will make the finished dish a bit too... piggy. Besides, a combination of stock flavourings is very authentic to the Hong Kong one-stock-fits-all philosophy, very nicely.

Pig's trotters are a total bargain. £1.70 per kilo, makes this dish a total bargain too, at £1.50 per generous bowlful.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

1kg pigs trotters
4 tablespoons of sunflower oil
2 tablespoons of demerara sugar
2 teaspoons of Chinese five spice powder
3 large beef bones
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 thumbs of ginger, coarsely chopped
3 whole garlic cloves
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
3 litres chicken or vegetable stock
50ml rice wine or dry sherry
50ml dark soy sauce
Pinch of black pepper
100g dried egg noodles
2 spring (salad) onions finely chopped
Handful fresh coriander, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 160c and spread the trotters with the half of the oil, Chinese five spice powder and sugar. Roast the trotters until dark in colour (2 hours approx). While the trotters are roasting, place the beef bones in a large stock pot with the rest of the oil and cook over a moderate heat until the bones slightly toast (approx 10 minutes). Add the onions, ginger, garlic and soften slightly to release their fragrance (approx 3 minutes). Add the stock, wine or sherry, star anise, pepper and cinnamon stick and boil until the trotters have finished roasting (approx 2 hours), and then strain the stock. Pour the stock back into the pot. Take the trotters out of the oven, and with a cleaver or big knife, cut them each into 4-5 pieces each. Add the trotters and the noodles to the stock and cook until the noodles are soft (approx 5 minutes). Serve the soup with a sprinkling of spring onions and fresh coriander.

Easy Lasagna Pasta Bake

All those layers can make cooking a conventional lasagna a time-consuming architectural effort, rather than a 3 minutes to build, aesthetically-pleasing construction that this easy bake recipe offers.

Also, since a regular lasagna features sheets of pasta, rather than the conchiglie (pasta shells) in this recipe, presentation can be a bit... slidy. I can't think of a better word for what happens when you use a knife and a serving spoon to portion a family-sized lasagna and make it look presentable on a plate.

This recipe provides excellent value for money, at a wallet-friendly £2 per serving.

Serves 4

Beef Ragu

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick celery
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
500g ground beef
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of dried basil
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1 large glass of red wine
400g can of chopped plum tomatoes
Pinches of salt and black pepper

Chop the vegetables finely and place them with the beef and olive oil in a large saucepan or wok. Brown on a low to moderate heat until all water has evaporated and the mixture is lightly frying in the oil (approx 30 minutes). Add the wine and herbs and allow to evaporate. Add the tomatoes and refill the can with water and also add to the pan with the salt and pepper. Cook uncovered until the sauce is thick and unctuous (approx 1 further hour, maybe a little more), making sure you stir every now and then to prevent sticking.

Bechamel Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

6 tablespoons of olive oil
3 tablespoons of plain flour
500ml milk
1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
Pinches of salt and pepper

Mix the oil and flour in a saucepan and cook on a low to moderate heat until the flour is absorbed and the paste is cooked through (approx 10 minutes), stirring every minute or so to ensure ir doesn't burn. Add a tenth of the milk and stir vigorously until the paste thickens to a dough-like consistency. Add another tenth of the milk and repeat. Repeatedly add milk until you have a smooth sauce. Add the nutmeg and salt and pepper. Cover the pan with clingfilm to prevent a skin forming on the sauce until you are ready to construct the lasagna bake.

Constructing the Lasagna Bake

INGREDIENTS:

500g conchiglie, or other pasta shapes
1 tablespoon of salt
100g grated parmesan or gran padano cheese
Black pepper

Preheat your oven at 240c. Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling water and the salt until three-quarters cooked (the pasta must have a very slightly hard centre). Mix the pasta with the beef ragu in an oven-proof casserole dish. Pour the bechamel sauce evenly over the pasta/ragu mix. Sprinkle the cheese over the bechamel sauce and grind plenty of black pepper over the cheese. Bake in the oven until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbling (15 minutes approx).