Spaghetti with Muscles and Sun Dried Tomatoes

Spaghetti with Muscles and Sun Dried Tomatoes

I came home on Friday expecting a nice piece of white fish or a whole sea bass or something - ritual in our house is to buy what looks good at the fishmonger on a Friday and make it up from there. Judging from the purchase of ready cooked muscles I guess the fishermen hadn't had a good week!!

Whilst cooking your own can add a bit more flavour to the muscle the ready cooked variety are pretty cheap (85 pence for a pack at our supermarket) and a few bits of careful ingredient adding and a really nice, tasty meal can be prepared without much fuss.

Ingredients

wholewheat spaghetti (enough for 2)
2 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
pack of ready cooked muscles
6 sun dried tomatoes
150g of reduced fat creme fraiche
half a glass of white wine
basil leaves

Method

Start by boiling some water and getting the sundried tomatoes on to soak (they need about 10 - 15 minutes to refresh them otherwise they can be a bit leathery).

Get the spaghetti on the boil - mine takes about 10 - 12 minutes to cook which is plenty of time to prepare the sauce.

Finely chop the shallots and garlic and add to a hot pan with 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Let the shallots soften rather than fry to a crisp. Add a dash of sea salt at this stage.

Next remove the sun dried tomatoes from the soak and slice into thin strips and add to the pan. After the pan is back up to the heat add the white wine and the muscles - make sure you don't overcook the muscles as they only really need heating through.

Drain the spaghetti and add the contents of the pan to the spaghetti pan. Give a good stir, the olive oil should evenly coat the spaghetti. Then add the creme fraiche and a good bit of black pepper. Stir well.

Serve with the ripped basil leaves on top. Great with the rest of the bottle of wine.

Tuna with Greek Salad

Tuna with Greek Salad

Dead easy and very healthy, that's what this meal is about.

Ingredients

Fresh Tuna Steak
1 Beef tomato
1 Little Gem lettuce
9 Black Olives
Feta Cheese
2 Pickled Chilli Peppers
Olive Oil
100g Cous Cous
1/2 a Green Pepper
2 slices Fresh Tomato
2 Sun Dried Tomatoes
1 tsp coriander powder

Method

For the cous cous - In a bowl place the cous cous, coriander powder, finely chopped sun dried tomatoes and salt & pepper into a bowl with some olive oil and 200ml boiled water. stir all the ingredients then add the green pepper (finely diced) and the fresh tomato (again finely diced) give a good stir and put a lid on the bowl.

Heat a griddle pan until searing hot. Oil the tuna with olive oil then season with sea salt and black pepper. Griddle on both sides to the point that the tuna is cooked 3/4 the way through. This allows for a medium rare steak - the way I like it - this requires good thick steaks.

Layer the salad and dress with a good olive oil.