Pasta Dishes that don't require cheese?

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Right on, Craig C ! A simple pasta with no cheese or tomato sauce

A simple dish of pasta with olive oil, red pepper flakes, anchovies and garlic. No cheese required or you can add it as you like. Fresh grated parm reggi, that is.

We do a variation of Craig's suggestion starting with sautéing onion, garlic, red pepper, S&P, basil or Italian seasoning in a generous amount of olive oil.

Add sausage slices of your choice, then add in diagonally sliced yellow, green squash and sliced plum tomatoes. (any veggie will do however)

Finally we add our pasta of choice, which could be ANY type. (we prefer spaghetti) We sometimes omit the sausage and add meat filled ravioli or tortellini.

We toss gently and, to our own taste, add some shredded Parmesan cheese, although the recipe is fine without. :yum:
 
Ohh plenty of great suggestions here! :)

Ill work thru them and give a cpl a try.

I agree you can get cheese which is lower fat and has good qualities such as high protein but here in the uk i at least havent seen any hard cheese which is reduced fat.

Using soft cheese is out of the question imo for a tomato sause.

Yes when we say pasta here it usually means spaghetti bolognese or maybe its just me who assumes when someone says pasta it just means spag bol' :P
Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA, the Co-operative all do reduced fat cheddar and similar cheeses. Aldi may also do so but I don't buy cheese in Aldi so I can't confirm that. Some cheeses are naturally lower fat than traditional British cheeses - Edam is one and I think Jarlsberg is. Leerdammer comes in a "lighter" version as well as the full fat version.

I live in a fairly rural area on the Derbyshire/Lancashire/Cheshire borders and have no trouble finding a wide variety of cheeses including reduced fat ones.
There's a cheese stall on the market in my nearest small town so that might be a source.[/COLOR]

Oh dear :) I must be very odd then. At the last count I had 15 different varieties of pasta of all shapes and sizes in my cupboard from spaghetti through bucatini, fusilli, canneloni, lasagne sheets and several I can't remember the names of. Mind you, even I thought that was a tad excessive and I'm gradually reducing it.:LOL:
 
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Marcella Hazen's pasta sauce is outrageously simple and tasty and requires no cheese. (Healthy fats in real butter aren't your enemy!)

2 cups tomatoes, with their juices (for example, a 28-ounce can of San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes)
5 tablespoons butter
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt
Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter and the onion halves in a saucepan. Add a pinch or two of salt.

Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with a spoon. Add salt as needed.

Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta. This recipe makes enough sauce for a pound of pasta.
Music to my ears!!!!
 
A few things you can do to add cheese, is to meld it into your sauce then add pasta. You also might try crumbeled gorganzola over pasta. Soft cheese that melts well is fontina cheese.
 
Marcella Hazen's pasta sauce is outrageously simple and tasty and requires no cheese. (Healthy fats in real butter aren't your enemy!)

2 cups tomatoes, with their juices (for example, a 28-ounce can of San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes)
5 tablespoons butter
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt
Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter and the onion halves in a saucepan. Add a pinch or two of salt.

Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with a spoon. Add salt as needed.

Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta. This recipe makes enough sauce for a pound of pasta.

That is a wonderful recipe!

A great "emergency shelf" recipe in the winter, when the cupboard is getting bare and the snow is piling up.

It is also very nice in late summer using fresh tomatoes.

I like to stick a couple of whole cloves into the onion.

I'm happy with a bowl of this chunky tomato sauce and some crusty bread to dunk in it, who needs pasta! :ermm::ohmy::LOL:
 
Marcella's sauces are so good.I love her cookbooks and refer to them often when I want as authentic Italian food as we can get in the U.S.
 
Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA, the Co-operative all do reduced fat cheddar and similar cheeses. Aldi may also do so but I don't buy cheese in Aldi so I can't confirm that. Some cheeses are naturally lower fat than traditional British cheeses - Edam is one and I think Jarlsberg is. Leerdammer comes in a "lighter" version as well as the full fat version.

I live in a fairly rural area on the Derbyshire/Lancashire/Cheshire borders and have no trouble finding a wide variety of cheeses including reduced fat ones.
There's a cheese stall on the market in my nearest small town so that might be a source.[/COLOR]

Oh dear :) I must be very odd then. At the last count I had 15 different varieties of pasta of all shapes and sizes in my cupboard from spaghetti through bucatini, fusilli, canneloni, lasagne sheets and several I can't remember the names of. Mind you, even I thought that was a tad excessive and I'm gradually reducing it.:LOL:

what? both of your points totally missed what i was saying for each.

1st the cheese i was referring to was hard cheese which is reduced fat not just any cheese.

and the second i was talking about what is commonly known as pasta as a dish not what pasta is for sale.
 
Well i had a hideous failure today in ym attempt to make assorted fish with pasta.

i really despise throwing away food but this one is sooo bad i almost gag at the thought of eating it again. unfortunately i have no pets so will have to chuck it i think and take it as a lesson learned.

i had 2 packs of assorted seafoood like muscles, prawns and squid rings.

Threw them in with the spinach and fried them for a bit.

First problem i see is the spinach just ended up in about 3 big lumps in the pan and wouldnt speerate.

I didnt have any other ideas of what to add then so just had this with the pasta.

After only a couple of bites i realise how horribly dry it is. Wont do at all!

So to try and salvage it i tried adding oyster sause and balsamic vinegar and that hardly helped at all.

The takeaway i think is i need a sauce really for everything i make with either pasta or rice or its just too dry- exceptions of course such as fried rice.

I like to keep things simple so i think ill try tomato sauce again. I will try adding the cheese in while cooking like is mentioned above and see how that goes.

When i make tomato sauce its at least edible just a bit bland without cheese. btw im not against using cheese, but i dont go above 14g of fat with anyhting really except for one offs. so gotta be low fat and as mentioned im up against the dreaded plastic clumping barrier with low fat. so well see how adding it in while cooking goes, i am skeptical about that cos i am guessing itll just go into little plastic balls while cooking just like it does when i add it after.

My tomato sauces were really improved with ppls tips from here such as adding tomato paste and by adding capers. but still a tomato pasta isnt quite complete without cheese i dont find.
 
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You almost had Frutti di Mare, as I mentioned above; adding a light tomato sauce to the seafood and pasta would have given you that, and Italians don't put cheese on seafood.

What kind of cheese are you considering adding to tomato sauce? I only add Parmigiano Reggiano cheese rinds to sauce - not the cheese itself.

If I were you, I would have a recipe to go by before starting to cook. If you don't have something in mind, ask us for suggestions :)

Sent from my VS840 4G using Discuss Cooking mobile app
 
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ye i think the main prob was i didnt have a clear idea of what i wanted to achieve, tho i accepted this was purely an experiment, ive learned from it nonetheless for my next attempt. ie that i should have at least a skeleton of what i wanna make next time :P

maybe ill try adding a tin of tomatoes to what i have currently then maybe make the current attempt salvageable :P
 
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Nice! Added a couple of tins of tomatoes to the current slop I made yesterday and it really brought it to life :) Tastes complete. Cheers for the advice :)
 
what? both of your points totally missed what i was saying for each.

1st the cheese i was referring to was hard cheese which is reduced fat not just any cheese.

and the second i was talking about what is commonly known as pasta as a dish not what pasta is for sale.
Yes, and I pointed out that reduced fat hard cheese IS available widely in the UK, contrary to your statement that reduced fat hard cheese is not available. I also added the European types of cheese as alternatives if you chose to use them.

Very few people in the UK are ignorant enough to think that spag bol is the only pasta dish and I pointed out that there are a number of varieties of pasta used for all sorts of recipes.

If you want help it isn't a good idea to be rude to those who attempt to provide it.
 
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