Tag: Pasta

Quorn, Pasta, Mushroom, Pepper and Cheese Treat

So last night we decided to try a variation on an old favorite. When Meg was sharing a house with a young lady named Emily, she was introduced to one of the tastiest and easiest meals in the world.

Dead simple to make and extremely tasty.

It doesn’t have a name although you could call it Emily’s Pasta Dish. The main ingredients for the original dish are bacon, flat mushrooms, green and red pepper, pasta and cheese.

Now just in case you didn’t notice the bacon –which I helpfully highlighted in italics and bold print– I’ll point it out again. This lovely delicious treat has artery hardening, cholesterol raising, heart attack inducing bacon in it.

We decided to substitute the real bacon with Quorn bacon.

Now I don’t know if you remember or not, but I did say in another post that my first introduction to Quorn was not a roaring success. The texture was wrong and it didn’t taste quite right. Interestingly enough it was ham, another pork product, and I had a similar problem with the ersatz Quorn bacon. Meg noticed immediately that it looked more like bacon shaped baloney. I hasten to add it was shaped like English bacon. I had to agree.

Further more, to me at any rate, it tasted like baloney. I consider myself a bit of an expert as I used to dearly love fried baloney sandwiches. I know, you are sitting there thinking, “And this man is surprised that he had a heart attack?” But if you notice the operative part of the sentence is the phrase, ‘used to.’

Now the more crunchy portions of the Quorn bacon did taste a bit like bacon, but the less crispy bits did not. The dish was still enjoyable in many ways, it just did not taste as good as the rest of the Quorn dishes we’ve tried.

I guess there really is no perfect substitute for good old greasy, crisp bacon.

The recipe is as follows –if you are still interested:

4 slices of bacon (real or substitute)

3 – 4 flat mushrooms (by all means use organic ones if you wish)

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

2 – 4 bowls of cooked pasta (we use the twist aka Fusilli pasta, again you can use whole wheat or any variation)

1 tablespoon of Olive Oil

grated light cheese for topping.

If you use American style “streaky bacon” you won’t need to add any oil to your frying pan.

First start slowly frying your bacon in a pan big enough to hold your bacon, mushrooms and peppers.

Start boiling your water for your pasta

While you’re boiling and frying, cut your flat mushrooms into medium-sized pieces and then do the same to your peppers. (I’m sure everyone knows this already but, don’t forget to get rid of the seeds)

Once your bacon is cooked to your level of satisfaction (crispy or not) add the cut mushrooms and peppers.

Continue to cook the bacon with the mushrooms and peppers until done.

Once your pasta is al dente enough drain the water from the pan.

Now drain the excess liquid from the frying pan.

*If you time it right, the pasta and the other ingredients will all be ready at the same time.*

Add your bacon, mushrooms and peppers to the cooked pasta and stir.

Once you’ve plated up the dish, add the grated cheese to taste.

This is a great recipe for students or someone who doesn’t want to spend a long time preparing a delicious meal.

With real bacon or fake bacon and lovely dish.

Please excuse the blurriness of the photo, I was starving and had a hard time holding my phone still!

There is one thing I need to mention. The Quorn bacon might not have tasted like real bacon but, the dish was a lot “cleaner” with it. Making the dish with real bacon is “yummier” but “greasier.” It’s really up to you whether or not you use real Porky Pig bacon or not.

If you try it out, let me know what you think of it. Is it better with real bacon or did you prefer the imitation bacon.

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Slow Sunday?

So we’ve painted three rooms in the house. Getting rid of the hideous lime-green feature wall in my bedroom and covering up a nightmarish dark pink in the third bedroom. By far the easiest room to re-paint was my daughter’s. It’s crime was to be a dark magnolia in a room that needed lighter walls to help it seem bigger and more open.

I have begun working in earnest on my book. Chapter three and counting. It actually sounds more impressive than it actually is. The chapters are a bit on the short side, but, I will be adding to them as time goes by. The important thing is that I am writing a lot. Remembering things that I am afraid I will forget if I am not careful.

I am now sipping a coffee and since the rain has finally stopped and the sun has come out nice and strong, I am waiting for the grass to dry a bit so I can mow the lawn and trim the garden up.  I also need to clean the downstairs and make lasagne. The lasagne making will take time because I’ve forgotten the recipe.

I always make any pasta dish using an American recipe. The English versions of Italian dishes are a little gruesome. They insist on filling out everything with  a disgusting white sauce. In lasagne, instead of using ricotta and parmesan cheese they infuse it  with this sauce. It is revolting.

Sorry, I just realised that I went of on a short tangent there. Let’s see, where was I? Oh, my slow Sunday list. I need to go up in the attic and put some more things away. I also need to bring a few things down. But chiefly, I need to put the giant air mattress up and get it off the third bedroom floor where it has sat like a rejected suitor all forlorn and in the way.

I’ve also just spent the last hour e-mailing myself pictures from my Blackberry. My daughter helpfully took before and after pictures of the rooms we painted. I, however, cannot find the usb attachment to transfer the pictures from my phone to my laptop. I then had the brilliant idea of emailing them to myself.

Of course that involved finding the damn things on the phone and then realising that somehow or other we managed to lose the lime green wall picture. On top of all that, the pictures had to be sent one at a time. All so I could include one picture of the ‘pink room’ in its before state and none of the end results.

I did manage to take a picture of my ‘overly long’ grass. Which on closer inspection doesn’t look all that long.

I need to do a ‘pick-up’ video for one of my YouTube channels and I’d like to do another film review on my blog. Which of course brings me back to writing, which I’d also like to do more of today. So my slow Sunday is looking more like a busy Sunday. On top of everything else, I also need another shower because I  discovered a bit earlier that yesterday I got some paint in some very interesting places.

How on earth did I get paint there?

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