Are there days when you go through your fridge and find enough ingredients to prepare a simple meal for the family? Our contributor, Jane, shares her simple recipe for a Prawn and Tuna Pasta.

By Jane Ng

I don’t always cook on weekends, so I make it a point to buy only enough groceries on weekdays to last us until Friday. So if I feel like cooking a meal on Saturday or Sunday, I have to rely on leftover groceries on weekdays, pantry staples or freezer options. So our weekend meals are nothing fancy (not that our weekday meals are much fancier) but one Saturday, I managed to cobble together enough ingredients to make for a presentable lunch.

I found in my freezer a pack of frozen, deshelled, cooked prawns (available from NTUC). I bought it months ago and had no idea what to do with it. I always have frozen corn kernels in my freezer because my kids love them steamed and they are an easy option for when I run out of vegetables. Together with a bunch of broccoli and very ripe cherry tomatoes from the week, I decided to try cooking a one-pot pasta.

I’m all for convenient cooking, so I’m embracing this latest way of cooking pasta – dump everything in one pot and cook it all together (including the dry pasta). It means less to wash up.



Ingredients:

  1. Prawns (Frozen)

  2. Tuna (in mineral water, canned)

  3. Sweet corn kernels (Frozen)

  4. Broccoli

  5. Cherry tomatoes

  6. Penne pasta

  7. 2-3 cups Water/chicken stock

  8. Pasta sauce

Directions:

  1. Boil water or chicken stock. I had some stock in the fridge and topped it up with water. When boiled, add pasta sauce and stir.

  2. Add the rest of ingredients starting from ones that take longest to cook, in this order: pasta, tomatoes(we like them “mashy”), broccoli, corn, tuna and prawns. (In this case prawns are cooked already, so I just added them last to warm them up)

  3. Add more liquid as needed, cook until pasta is al dente.
    And lunch is served!

  4. I turned off the fire when there was still lots of liquid (above), left it standing for 10 minutes and the sauce was mostly soaked up.


Article first appeared on Kids.Joy.Home on 21 Sep 2015. Republished with permission.