Home-made fast food

Tuesday, the day when I don't have time to cook, but the family needs to be fed. The sort of day I am sure it would be easy to resort to fast food or packets. I do like fish and chips, but my taste tends to the expensive: fish, scallops, calamari, over the chips, hamburger with the lot and potato cakes (OK, ideally I'd have the chips and potato cakes with the seafood!). Anyway, there are the big chains, but they are strictly 'special day' meals, not everyday food. I am not a packet-food kinda girl, so what do I do?

I cheat! I love to cheat in the kitchen. It's still feeding my family, but the lack of effort makes me feel clever and sneaky, especially when the meal tastes as yummy as this. It's somewhat like take away as it's very popular with the children, in spite of it not being served from wrappers or boxes or having a free toy served with it.

All the recipe requires is:

olive oil
a packet of pasta
a tin of diced tomatoes
delicious sausages

The various sausages these days means you can serve different versions of this dish, and still end up with something lovely. I prefer well-flavoured rather than plain sausages, as the flavours help infuse the sauce. I usually go with two sausages per person, but to stretch the meal, I will add extra snags sometimes to ensure The Lovely Man has leftovers to take to work. The oil can be garlic oil, or plain. The pasta shape is completely your call. When I am in a hurry, I don't really want to be thinking I don't have the right shaped pasta! Generally we'll have this with some Parmesan to finish, and that's it. This last quickie, was so delicious I had to crow about it. I was using some of the oil from our previous meal, Poor Man's Potatoes, infused with onion, bay and garlic. I used sausages of lamb with honey, rosemary and mint - good choice!

Sausage Meatball Pasta

2 tbsp olive oil, flavoured or not
500g pasta, shape optional
12 well-flavoured sausages
1 tin of diced tomatoes
water
salt
pepper
sugar (optional)

Get your water on to boil for the pasta first thing, and then get on with the sauce. You can cut the sausages into pieces, or cut a slit down the casing to remove the meat. I prefer to just get my pan on the heat, add the oil and then squeeze the sausage meat onto the pan, breaking it off in roughly ball shapes. Cook the meat off so some of it caramelises. When it is well, browned, or as brown as you have the patience for, add the tin of tomatoes, and then fill the tin half-full with water and add that to the pan. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste (I love a little pinch of sugar with tomato-based sauces).

Let the sauce and meatballs simmer away until your pasta is cooked. As long as the meat is cooked through, it can take as long or short as you want. Mine usually ends up cooking for about 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile cook the pasta according to packet directions, drain it, but not too well, some of the water clinging is fine. Put the pasta back into your pot, and pour the sausage sauce over it. Turn it about together and serve with Parmesan if the style of sausage suits.

Serves 6

The rush I was in slid over to the photography - all that steam wasn't helping me get a decent shot. When you have the children asking if they can start eating, well, the photo is going to suffer! In truth I was just as eager to tuck in as they all were!

I've made this with Italian-style pork with fennel and chilli sausages, beef with Merlot and cracked pepper, chicken and chive, and probably others. My favourite is without a doubt these lamb ones, but I think the bottom line is, if you love the taste of the sausage you choose, you'll love this quick-cook pasta.