Athlete's Cookbook - Athlete Recipes
Mediterranean Pasta
Key Features
- low fat
- high carbohydrate
- fairly easy
- super tasty
This dish was inspired by the classic Greek combination of feta cheese and olives. It is a tomato based pasta sauce with the added Mediterranean flavour of fennel. Fennel is one of my favourite vegetables, I love to eat it raw, and I cook with it to. Olives added to a pasta dish is a great way to add some flare and colour to a pasta.
INGREDIENTS
(Serves 2 hungry athletes)
- 250g dried pasta
- 1/2 an onion, diced
- 1/2 fennel, finely sliced
- 1 clove or 1 tsp crushed garlic
- fresh red chilli, 1/4 – whole depending on desired spice level
- 500g tomato passata (sugo)
- 10-15 pitted olives, halved
- 50g feta, 2cm cubes
- 3 sprigs of fresh parsley
- pepper to taste
This meal is a really high carbohydrate meal that would be ideal before an event or game. It has buckets of flavour with the inclusion of naturally salty foods of olives and feta. There are lots of changes you can make to this dish to make it more simple (use dried parsley and dried chilli), or more tasty (include fennel seeds at the onset of cooking), or a bit naughty and higher in fat (add 2 tsps of cream to make a softer rosa style sauce).
Method
- Cook the pasta in a pot of boiling water till al-dente
- Cook the onions and garlic in a splash of oil in a large frypan until translucent
- Add the fennel and chilli, cook for a further 3-4 minutes
- When the fennel is slightly soft, add the pasatta and olives
- When heated through and the liquid has reduced a little add the cubes of feta, pepper and parsley
- You can add the feta a little earlier and cook it for two minutes if you want the cheese to melt and make a creamy cheese consistency
- Toss the sauce through the cooked pasta and serve.
Tags: FENNEL, GREEK, HIGH CARB, ITALIAN, LOW FAT, MAIN COURSE, OLIVES, PASTA AND NOODLES