A FEW weeks ago a friend and I took part in a cook-off hosted by Nederburg wines. We had a wide variety of ingredients to choose from. We were grouped into teams and each team was assigned a bottle of wine. To cut the story short my team made pasta from scratch. One of my team members was very excited and couldn’t believe how easy it was.
That got me thinking: it’s school holidays and the process of making pasta at home can be exciting for the kids as well. It’ll also give them an opportunity to unleash their inner master chef. Personally, I love the idea of getting children interested in food from an early age.
Even if you don’t want to make your own, there’s a wide variety of pastas available at retail stores and food markets. Talking about food markets, one can also shop for another one of those ingredients that are a fridge staple: pesto. Whether it’s basil, red or coriander pesto, pesto is easy to incorporate into almost everything.
This week, my friends suggested this recipe for a chicken and mushroom pasta dish with basil pesto. The recipe contains a generous amount of cream and a bit of butter at the end. It is one of those hearty, delicious and filling dishes and it would go well with a glass of chardonnay.
l See www.mzansistylecuisine. co.za