Anchovy and Broccoli Pasta

I started this blog to get a bit of myself back while I was on maternity leave but one thing I didn't expect was how it would push me to be more creative with my son's food.  One thing I'm very bad at though is cooking just for myself.

If there are other people around I'll go to huge amounts of effort and, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy cooking but I also have 30 hours of work to do in an average day and I kind of like to get some sleep.  The amount of times I've slung some oven chips in while cleaning up or doing an exercise video.  It's not good.

So I'm making an early resolution (why wait till New Year's anyway?)  I promise to respect myself more when cooking for one.

So you might start to see a few more grown up meals on here which are quick, easy and contain my favourite ingredients!

And so we come to anchovies... A pizza isn't a pizza without anchovies but I struggle to get through a whole tin and so often end up throwing half a tin away.  I'm also someone who loves broccoli.  My sister told me about a recipe she made featuring both.  I had a look around at what I could find but frankly didn't like any recipes out there, so me being me, made up my own.  I thought it was pretty good.  I'm not sure I'd use spaghetti next time.  The sauce was a little chunkier than I intended so probably a shaped pasta would be better but it was blooming delicious.

Anchovy and Broccoli pasta - Serves 1 adult

Ingredients

75g of the dried pasta of your choice (or more if you're hungry)

90g Broccoli florets

1 Clove garlic

4 Anchovy fillets, chopped

1 tsp Olive oil

1 tsp Pesto

Grating of parmesan to serve if liked

Method

Put the pasta on to cook; 5 minutes before the end of cooking time, add in the broccoli.

In the meantime, heat the oil and add the chopped garlic and anchovies to the pan.  Fry on a very gentle heat, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes.

Once cooked, drain the pasta, reserving the water.  Take out and mash the broccoli with a fork.  Stir into the anchovy / garlic mix on a low heat with some pesto and a tbsp or so of the cooking water.

Stir in the pasta then turn into a bowl topping with parmesan if liked.

Devour in front of your favourite TV shows.  After all, there has to be some benefits to being on your own!

Make it Thrifty:

If you do use some anchovies on a pizza, put the remainder of the tin in a jar and cover with olive oil. Put in the fridge and they'll keep for a few days so you can make this!

Like this?  Bet you'll love this Mushroom pasta!