What We Ate Wednesday--Bippy Dread and Creamy Tomato Pasta (2 recipes. Luxury!)

Hello lovelies! While we had a fabulous time away on the Magical Mystery Tour, we are both still a bit tired from all the travel, so have been planning simple but healthy meals that come together quickly.

On Sunday we had Bippy Dread (a spoonerism for Dippy Bread) with homemade GF flatbreads, store-bought hummus, mango chutney and minty yogurt raita with lime and chilli cucumbers topped with crushed peanuts. If you want details about how to make the flatbread, go here.

We had some leftover hummus and thought I would try this recipe from the blog Oh She Glows. I have been a fan of Angela Liddon for yonks. I read her blog and have one of her cookbooks. I hadn't made it yet as we rarely buy store-bought hummus as it is considerably more pricey than homemade (I can make the equivalent of 2.5 containers of hummus for the same price as buying one and there's not all that plastic to throw away.) But, we were tired and I didn't have everything needed to DIY so we bought some plain hummus at Lidl for Bippy Dread.

So this pasta thing--it is called Adriana's Fave 10 Minute Pasta (Toddler Friendly) and looked pretty easy. You can see her original blog post and recipe here. I used my standard homemade marinara sauce (as did she), but you could make it go faster by using a jar of red sauce. Basically, it is red sauce mixed with some hummus to make the sauce creamy and boost the protein. She tops her with hemp hearts for extra protein, but we can't afford hemp hearts and this came out fine without them.

She doubles the pasta so it will make 4 adult sized portions, but we like things saucy over here in the Spider household. Wayhey! Oo-er, Mrs! (Get you mind out of the gutter! you know what I mean!) so we just used 1.5 cups pasta as that's our normal serving, but you could easily use 3 cups pasta and just have less sauce. I am sure it would be equally delicious.

Creamy Tomato Pasta
1. measure out your pasta and put a large pot of lightly salted water on to boil. Use 1.5 cups pasta for two people, 3 cups for four folks. 

2. In another large pot, make your marinara.

Marinara
1 onion, finely diced
half a red pepper, diced
1 grated carrot
3 cloves crushed garlic

3. Cook those for a bit in a splash of oil or 1/4 cup water then add:

1/4 cup red wine (optional--but really good...if you are worried about alcohol, buy alcohol free cooking wine)
1 tsp each dried basil and oregano
1/2 tsp broth powder or half a stock cube
1 tin chopped tomatoes
2-3 TB tomato puree to thicken

4. When the water boils, add your pasta and boil according to package directions. The GF pasta we buy is ready in 8 minutes. When the pasta is nearly done stir in:

1/3 to 1/2 cup hummus into the marinara sauce.

5. Drain the pasta and add it to the pot of creamy sauce. 

That's it. I had it made in under 30 minutes.

It was really tasty and fairly quick since I had hummus to hand. If I'd had to drag out the food processor and make a batch of hummus, it would have added and extra 10-15 minutes to it, so this is best done with something you have in the fridge already if you want to make it snappy.

We will definitely eat this again. This was made with regular flavour hummus (or hummus flavour hummus as we call it), but it would be great with some of my homemade roasted red pepper, smoky cheese flavour hummus or sun-dried tomato.

If someone asks you "Where do vegan get their protein?" you can serve them up a big bowl of this.