I make a tomato, kale and lemon one-pot pasta on repeat, but what other one-pot pastas should I try?
Linda, Belfast
“One-pot pastas have a particular brilliance to them,” says Anna Jones, who is behind the recipe of which you speak and whose latest book, Easy Wins, is published in March. Happily, this method, whereby you put the sauce ingredients, the pasta and the cooking water all in one vessel, can be taken in numerous directions, though Jones says it is especially well suited to “buttery, lemony, olive oil-type sauces”.
To achieve carb comfort, there are two schools of thought. The first, says Mateo Zielonka, author of The Pasta Man, is “to mix chopped vegetables – broccoli, onion, tomatoes, herbs – pasta and water in a pan and bring to a boil”. The other option would be to “cook onions, garlic and other vegetables in olive oil, then add the pasta and water, and simmer until the liquid is absorbed”. Either way, success hinges on ratios, so Linda will need equal amounts of pasta to water. “You can then play around with flavours,” Jones says, be that by adding citrus zest, bashed-up spices, a tablespoon of harissa or even miso. Her current favourite is finely chopped green olives and capers, which go into a pan with a load of lemon zest. “At the end, stir through green herbs. It’s simple, it’s bright and it’s delicious.”
