Quick delicious midweek meals, I think, require clever shortcuts. And one of the ones that I use
is pre-bought gnocchi right, you can get it from the supermarkets, these are potato dumplings.
So that cheat will gain me time but I'm still gonna make in one pan a beautiful sweet homemade
tomato sauce. Homemade pesto, we're gonna celebrate seasonal veggies. We're gonna
get fast food on the table really quick and it's gonna be scrumptious. So let's do it get your pan,
whack it onto a high heat. In we go with a little swig of olive oil, two cloves of garlic, and we're
gonna make a beautiful homemade sauce. So I'm just gonna peel this garlic and finely slice it.
See that little bit there? I'll push that aside for the pesto.
Most of the garlic goes into this pan, and let's get it frying.
We go in with the gnocchi, season it and love it with salt and pepper.
I am gonna now make a really nice sweet tomato sauce and if you want to have real
delicious sweetness there's a little trick. Try and buy plum tomatoes, that makes all
the difference. The plum tomatoes are A-grade, the chopped ones and the passata are B-grade,
okay. Just pour them into your hands, clean of course, and then when they're in your hands
just crush them, slowly but surely. Don't cover your shirt... I normally do. So half-fill your tin
with water and pour it in. You can see it coming up to a little simmer. So let's get some veg.
Asparagus, we love. What I want to do is just let it bend naturally and let it break off and you'll
get the woody part, and then where it clicks you just have the pure tenderness. And I'm going to
put a little wadge in each half of the pan, just push the gnocchi aside. And the asparagus is going
to cook in the sweet tomato sauce, so if you think about when you blanch greens, asparagus,
any veg in the water, a lot of the goodness goes in the water then down the drain right? Not here,
the goodness is staying in the pan. So a lid goes on top. Three minutes of cooking. Now in that time
we're gonna make the most beautiful homemade pesto but not with basil, with spinach, and not
with pine nuts, with hazelnuts. So this little bit of garlic is more than enough okay? A pinch
of salt. We bash it up in our pestle and mortar, every kitchen needs one. If you haven't got one
you can just finely chop things. So we take a nice big handful of hazelnuts, and in we go.
Give them a good pounding, then we're going in with spinach, 100 grams
and treat it like a herb okay, smash it up. When we eat spinach it's fresh, iron-y,
so we're gonna play with that. Yes pesto comes in a jar and it's convenient but it never
ever tastes like that. It's just got surround sound in flavour, it's just
full of it, delicious. Grate in some parmesan like that and we want to just muddle it
with a few tablespoons of olive oil and you'll see the texture completely change, look at this!
Look at the colour! I've got one last little flavour here. From a loyal friend, Mr Olive.
So we don't need loads let's take four. Four olives that's all you need, four olives, these
will make all the difference. When you're buying olives get the ones with the stones in okay,
just squash them and squeeze the stone out. Really simple, these will taste three times better. So
all I do is just tear them up really scruffy, I like to kiss it with a little oil like that.
So now we get two nice big spoons of our homemade pesto over the asparagus.
It's gonna be amazing. Look at that! Then we get those few little olives,
hello Conker! He can always smell the food. Beautiful, one-pan wonder, made with love,
using little hacks and shortcuts. A little bit of parmesan on top, nice long strokes. Look at that.
Beautiful. What I love about this dish is I'm never bored of it, it's comforting.
That for me is satisfying quick midweek cooking, 10-15 minutes max, you rattle that out.
So tasty, sweetness galore. You've got that little hum of garlic and the parmesan and
those hazelnuts come on! I really love the spinach pesto because it's fresh and then the asparagus is
cooked in the tomato sauce. Use fingers. That is a humdinger of a dish. What a great one-pan wonder.