'A Way to the Heart is Through the Stomach' - A Recipe

I love pasta. Painfully relatable? Possibly so, but by living with a (lovely, kind and caring) mum who despises every delicious swirl and pinched-bow, except lasagne, I feel slightly deprived by my second favourite carbohydrate (if you read Nostalgia on a Plate, you will be able to work out pretty quickly what number one is). So, one lunchtime when I was alone in the house, I gleefully grabbed the lonesome pasta bag in the cupboard and created this: broccoli pesto pasta. (It’s so simple that I will not have invented it, but I occasionally like to believe in my culinary prowess.)

So, if you would like to impress…me (I doubt any other date would offer to marry you after this dish, but you can always try), here is how to do it[1]:

Ingredients: favourite pasta, broccoli cut into florets, two tablespoons of pesto, smattering of mature cheddar cheese.

Time: about 15 minutes. Under 2 to demolish, if you are me.

1. Boil water in a pan and measure out the ‘75g per person’ portion as it states on the pasta packet.

    Realise that you are growing young woman/man, disregard the scales and hurl out as much pasta as a small rhinoceros could eat – if they could appreciate pasta.

2. Pour the pasta into the boiling water. Get the pasta packet out of the cupboard again, after realising you did not read the time needed to cook it. Review this multiple times, because your brain will act as if it has never encountered numbers before.

3. While the pasta is bubbling energetically away, cut broccoli into florets. Possibly research how much will constitute to one of your five-a-day and then feel accomplished, even needing to gloat, that you have successfully eaten healthily (even if the meal is followed by a huge flapjack slice-what? Me?)

4. Grate a little cheddar cheese, ready to stir into your creation at the end. I use extra mature, because my taste buds are not weak and puny and withered. (Also because I like the taste, but whatever you desire: maybe try a pinch of parmesan if you feel like an Italian goddess, like I usually embody every time I serve myself this.)

5. Five minutes before the pasta is ready to be devoured, scrape the broccoli into the pan. Feel a sense of power as you send each little broccoli soldiers to their deaths by walking the chopping-board plank.

6. When the cooker’s timer screams that YOUR FOOD IS READY YOU BETTER COME HERE RIGHT NOW OR IT WILL ALL BURN AND IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT, drain the pasta and place in a bowl.

7. Scrape two (three, five…) tablespoons of pesto out of a jar and stir into the pasta bowl. Sprinkle (or slam-dunk, if you grated enough for a steroid-driven mouse[2]) the cheese over the top.

8. Devour, consume and internally grin that you are now officially chef.

[1] There are literally millions of other ways to win me over, please do not just continually boil pasta away at the stove, with a pleading desperation bleating in your eyes. Also I know this is directed to no secret lovers, trust me, I am merely being hyperbolic.

[2] I am not entirely sure what the constant animal references are either. Possibly because I usually identify with the ‘I could eat a horse’ category of hungry.