November 2025

The Internet abounds with quick-and-easy recipes. An example being One Pot Tomato Basil Pasta Recipes. In general they are either not that quick-and-easy, or not very good.

But with a bit less quick-and-easy, they can be relatively easy, still quick, and quite tasty.

I started with this keyingredient recipe. As a guideline. So.

One onion, mandolined. Stuck half of it in a pot with some of the fat drippings I keep in the fridge from previous projects, added one small diced smoked chicken breast, fried that up a little.

Added half a tin of leftover chopped tomatoes and a diced yellow pepper from the freezer from back when they were selling then cheap. Left it going while I halved and salted a punnet of cherry tomatoes. Added dried chillies and oregano as recommended, one vegetable stock cube, a tablespoon of chicken stock powder, a litre of water, the tomatoes and the other half of the onions, and a third of a pack of screw noodles.

The latter was a mistake — these screw noodles went a lot quicker than I expected so they were a bit mushy in the end, which came more quickly than I expected.

Fished everything out with a slotty spoon, reduced the sauce, added everything back together and added a bunch of basil leaves.

It was damn tasty I tellya.