Pasta

You haven’t lived until you’ve roasted tomatoes with onions and garlic and tossed them with pasta! Roasting reveals a deep, satisfying flavour hidden in tomatoes. This will become one of your favourite ways to dress up pasta. My family loves the simple rustic flavours of this dish, and I’m sure yours will too.

The best lasagna is made with two different sauces: a tomato sauce and a cheese sauce. It’s the sort of dish that’s worth taking the time to make it right, but that doesn’t mean you have to slave away in the kitchen for hours. There are lots of ways to speed up the process and still enjoy spectacular results!

There’s nothing more satisfying than a bowl full of spaghetti and meatballs and my gold standard tomato sauce. Every cook has an all-purpose tomato sauce up his or her sleeve, a perfect last-minute pasta sauce that’s just as good served without meatballs.

Sometimes what you don’t know can help you, especially when it comes to getting vegetables on the table. Kids will always eat pasta with tomato sauce but they won’t always eat their vegetablesso it can help to magically, mysteriously hide them in the sauce. This is the sort of sauce that you may end up making on a regular basis, so it’s worth investing in an immersion blender. It really speeds up the works.

This classic dish is elegantly tasty, simple and super speedy. The creamy, cheesy sauce that makes Fettuccini Alfredo so memorable easily forms when great Parmesan cheese and a splash of cream are simply tossed together with hot noodles and aromatics. This dish is at its best when you make it and serve it immediately.

Few things are as good as a steaming bowl of homemade macaroni and cheese, especially when it doesn’t come out of a box. There’s something very satisfying about making this classic dish yourself. And it tastes a whole lot better than anything made in a factory!

Tomatoes aren’t the only sweet red fruit that make great pasta sauce. Red bell peppers are excellent too, especially paired with the faint licorice flavour of fennel seeds.

There are few things as good as a warm bowl of homemade macaroni and cheese especially when it doesn’t come out of a box! I don’t normally put lobster in mine - and this version is great without my favourite crustacean - but it’s a great way to make the ordinary extraordinary

If you’re a home cook you need a good meat sauce recipe up your sleeve. This is one of mine. Its secret is that I don’t brown the meat. That way it doesn’t toughen and need hours of braising to tenderize again. I also use a food processor to save a lot of knife work. Quick, easy and tasty!

This is the pasta sauce I crave more than any other. It’s easy to make and perfect when there’s a finicky eater at the table because the bacon is irresistible. You can combine the simple flavours of a great tomato sauce with crowd-pleasing bacon, and you’re guaranteed a winner.

Braising is the ultimate comfort food. This method takes a cheap, tough cut of pork and turns it into a magical stew. You wont believe how simple the spätzle noodles are to make, they’re the perfect way to soak up the juices from the pork.