Like pretty much everything that emanates from my kitchen, this salmon and pasta concoction is a bit rough looking, but it’s tasty and filling and speedy and seems to tick most of the major food groups needed to stave off malnutrition. I wheel this out most weeks and it always goes down well.
This is my go-to, on those days when I need to have something in the little badgers’ pieholes within 10 minutes flat, shoehorned in between Rounders Club and Rainbows. I use frozen salmon – but you could substitute with cooked chicken, tinned tuna or ham. Or, frankly anything you can find lurking, more or less in date, that your audience is likely to eat. Many of my meals begin from this point, a little like ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ but with reliably unpromising ingredients.
I’m generally feeding two, so my measures reflect this, but obvs scale up or down dependent on your numbers and appetites. I use skinless salmon fillets, but if you can find only those with the skin on, it’s easiest to cook the fillet in a frying pan as the pasta boils, and flake it in at the end. It creates another pan to wash, but need not slow down teatime.
Ingredients
- Enough pasta to feed your diners
- 1 salmon fillet per two children
- Handful each of frozen sweetcorn and peas. If you have broccoli, this also works well, but you will need to add it 1 minute after adding the fish.
- Cream cheese
Method
- Fill a large pan with a kettleful of hot water and bring back to the boil.
- Add in pasta and set timer for 3 minutes.
- Add frozen fish fillets to the water and set timer for 4 minutes
- Add in a handful each of sweetcorn and peas and set the timer for 3 minutes.
- Check everything’s cooked and drain.
- Return to the pan and stir in a couple of generous spoonfuls of cream cheese. Add more if it seems appropriate.
- Season.
- Serve.
- Done.
raising badgers 