Good Food: Pasta and Noodle Dishes: Triple-tested Recipes (BBC Good Food)

This is an excellent selection of recipes, ideal for those who are short of time. It is nice to be able to vary the commonplace pasta & pesto or tomato sauce with more interesting alternatives.Each recipe is laid out on a single page, usually no more than three or four steps in the preparation and using easily available ingredients and/or store cupboard basics. On the adjacent page there is a picture of the finished dish. Preparation/cooking times vary from 20 minutes to an hour and a half although the longer times are generally because the dish needs to be baked in the oven so you won’t be standing over a pot for the whole time. Recipes are typically for two or four, plus a few for up to six people. I would say that two-thirds to three-quarters are pasta dishes with the remainder being more oriental noodles dishes. There is plenty to appeal to vegetarians as well as meat eaters, for example, summer veggie pasta, pasta with broad beans, two cheese lasagna with pesto, pumpkin pasta (perfect for an autumn supper) and gooey pasta bake (fabulous but really simple as it uses shop-bought tortellini). There is also a veggie bolognaise using lentils in place of meat. For meat eaters there is a good Sicilian lamb & noodles dish, pork & pinenut pappardelle, and a rigatoni sausage bake to mention just a few. On the oriental side of things, amongst others there are pad thai, tofu & veg stirfry, & pork & ginger noodles.The only disadvantage is that the small size of the book means that the font is correspondingly reduced which is less easy to read from a distance when cooking. It is also difficult to keep the book open at the right page – my cookbook stand can’t cope with such a small book and if you plonk a weight on the page it is then difficult to read anything. However this is a pretty minor quibble on what is otherwise a very handy book.

The BBC Good Food books are fantastic. I brought a few of these for my partner for Christmas as he loves to cook but has given up on previous cook books I’ve brought him from the likes of Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith etc as their too fussy, require hours of prep and the ingredients are expensive and hard to find. I have to say we’ve not been disappointed! There’s no fancy exotic ingredients to buy as well as easily findable in our local Asda and they require no fussy prep work to sort out hours in advance therefore they are great a quick meal after work as well as showing off your cooking skills to friends. The recipes offer a wide variety of fish and meat dishes as well as starters and puddings. While the recipes are quick, they are delicious and look great. We now sit down and pick 7 recipes to cook throughout the week to spice up our dull food routine. It’s also cut our food bill right down as the ingredients are cheap to buy. The recipes are very easy to prepare and easy to follow and they can be easily halved or double. We’ve now brought a further two books and will continue to buy many more to add to our collection. Highly recommend!