Pasta?!

Just before we started this week RAF man and I were talking about what we would eat. One of the things we were trying to decide was whether or not pasta was available and we thought probably not. It's only made from flour, which we certainly have, but would there really have been factories in England making pasta instead of something more useful to the war effort? And surely it wouldn't be worth importing, after all it wasn't something people were used to eating on a regular basis anyway.

Then I opened a wartime recipe book and the first thing I saw was a pasta dish! So of course I had to include it. The sauce is made from tinned tomatoes (which you might well have grown at home and bottled yourself), onion or leek, a handful of parsley and some grated cheese stirred at the end. It's then mixed with the cooked pasta and baked with some breadcrumbs on top.

I don't think I've had anything quite so "un40s" in all the time we've been doing this experiment! It felt like cheating, the only thing missing was some garlic bread and it could have been an ordinary night. A dish like that must have seemed so exciting and different after days of various things with brown gravy.

 

 

 

Mind you, such frivolity couldn't be allowed to last and we returned firmly to the 40s as soon as the pasta was done. "Something with brown gravy" must always be followed by "something with custard" and today it was a very nice crumble. Yum!