Cooking while also working a full-time job is hard.
It’s even harder when you spend half your life on public transport sweating profusely and considering hopping on the JustEat app the second you get in the door.
Minimal effort, maximum food. Divine.
Except it’s not really when you don’t have any money and are forced to try and feed yourself with whatever’s left in the press.
How lucky, how delighted, how elated I felt last week then when I discovered that the only things I had left in the gaff were half a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, a few garlic cloves, some peppers, green pesto, and an assortment of spices.
And a load of ravioli pasta, obviously.
On the outside, these ingredients don’t sound as if they’d amount to much but let me tell you, they did. They really did.
And they only took up 15 minutes of my time. Here’s how:
1. Cut up your garlic cloves into some fine pieces and throw them in a pan with some vegetable oil. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to the boil and start cooking your ravioli (I used spinach and cheese ravioli, but any kind would be decent).
2. Add your chopped up peppers into the pan and let it all simmer for a few minutes before adding your sun-dried tomatoes from the jar. Pour some of the juice from the sun-dried tomato jar in as well – trust me on this, it’s delicious.
3. Get some smoked paprika and throw a load of that into the pan too – as much as you want really, no judgements here. Add a tiny bit of basil too if you’ve some knocking around and leave to simmer for about 5-6 minutes.
4. Strain your pasta and add it to the pan once it’s cooked, stirring in a few spoons of pesto while you’re at it. Leave the mix on a low heat for a few more minutes before serving.
Genuinely life-changing, like.
