Really fast courgettes and pasta

Finally the courgette plants have started producing and, as usual, after a complete drought we now have a glut of the things.

I plant two varieties of courgettes: Genovese, a pale green skinned variety, and Cocozelle, a stripy traditional Italian style one. I don't grow the dark, green skinned ones any more because they just used to get overlooked because we adore the taste of the other two varieties more.

Generally when we eat them with a meal I just roughly cube the courgettes and put them into a pan with about a tablespoon of butter and let them cook until they're soft.

Sometimes, though, I serve them with pasta and this is how:

Fusilli with courgettes and crème fraiche.

(This method is loosely based on a River Cafe recipe from the new River Cafe Classic Italian Cook Book which was previewed in the November issue of Red magazine, although it's something I've made before, but without a recipe. The River Cafe recipe uses 150g of butter which might be authentically Italian, but it's too much for me!)

Boil the fusilli according to the packet instructions in boiling salted water. I use 9oz for the four of us - two adults and two children. The River Cafe uses 320g, is that about 9oz? Probably.

Add a slug of olive oil to a pan and cook a sliced clove of garlic for a few minutes.

Add to that 250g (or so) of courgettes chopped into rounds, halved or quartered if the courgette is a little rotund.

Add a slice of butter. How much does this weigh? About 50g or so, but it's not important.

Leave to cook, turning the courgette and garlic over in the buttery oil, scraping the bits off the bottom. Use a medium to lowish heat - not too high, if it browns it'll taste bitter.

When the courgette is soft, take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a few moments. If you've timed this correctly the pasta will be about done by now too. Often it isn't, but the courgettes don't mind hanging around.

Add a couple of tablespoons of crème fraiche (I use the lower fat version) to the courgettes and stir. It will seem a bit thick, so add a couple of ladlefuls of the pasta cooking water and stir again. This will give you a lovely silky sauce.

Toss the fusilli into the lovely creamy courgette-y sauce and serve in bowls with plenty of freshly grated parmesan and black pepper.

Black tagliatelle with tomatoes, garlic and olives

You know how it is - husband pops into Lidl, spies black squid ink pasta for sale and comes home with a bagful as 'something interesting for the girls'. The girls, Hannah, 5, and three-year-old Rosie were, respectively, dubious and fascinated.

The pasta, meanwhile, sat in the cupboard for a week or two, daring me to think of something to cook with it.

Recipe books seem to err on the side of a seafood sauce, suggesting things like clams, prawns or, appropriately, squid. Unfortunately such delicacies are not thick on the ground on the Preselis! But then I was in my local Spar which happily stocks lovely veggies from the local biodynamic farm, Plas Dwbl, and there was a lovely carton of yellow egg tomatoes and a bag of mixed differently sized cherry tomatoes, with a couple of the yellow ones thrown in for good luck. How could I resist!

We had some of these jewel-like delights for lunch tossed around in a little olive oil in a frying pan then popped into a sandwich with smoked bacon and crusty granary bread.

But I couldn't resist them at tea time either and the black tagliatelle sort of jumped out of the cupboard at me. So I cooked this:

Black tagliatelle with tomatoes, garlic and olives

1. Set the oven to Gas mark 6-7, and put a good handful of mixed cherry and yellow tomatoes into a roasting tin. Cut up some of the bigger tomatoes, the rest can be left whole.
2. Roughly chop one garlic clove per person, and a couple of shallots or red onions too. Add a few glugs of good olive oil, stir and put in the oven.
3. Meanwhile cook the black tagliatelle, a nest or two person according to greed, in boiling salted water according to the packet instructions.
4. Chop a nice big handful of parsley, preferably the broad-leaved type.
5. When the tomatoes are blistering and soft, add a handful of green olives per person to the roasting tin, swirl it around and put back into the oven until the olives are heated through.
6. Drain the pasta, reserving a few tablespoonfuls of the cooking water, then toss the tomatoey contents of the roasting tin and the parsley into the hot pasta. Add some of the cooking water to loosen up the lovely tasty sauce.
7. Pile into dishes and top with freshly grated Parmesan and ground black pepper.

Rosie's favourite sausage bolognese sauce

Ingredients:
1 large onion
450g sausages
1 tsp mixed herbs or 1 tbsp fresh herbs such as thyme, rosemary, sage
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 dash tomato ketchup

Method:
Finely chop the onion and brown it in a frying pan with about a tablespoonful of olive oil.
Meanwhile skin the sausages and squeeze the meat out into the frying pan. Push it about and chop it up with the onion until both are starting to colour.
Add the herbs and the tomatoes, then fill the can up with cold water and add that too.
Leave to bubble away until it is a nice thick sauce.
Stir in the ketchup (this is optional, but child-pleasing).
Serve over pasta, baked potatoes or boiled new potatoes and top with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan (or cheddar if preferred).

Serves four.

Options:
Add grated carrot as a hidden vegetable.
Add a can of red kidney beans and some chilli powder for a sausage chilli and serve with boiled rice.
Layer it up with lasagne sheets and bechamel sauce to make a sausage lasagne.