I tried Sainsbury’s weird ‘twisted’ recipes

I am no stranger to the pasta dinner. It’s quick, cheap, filling and tastes good with everything. Or does it?

Sainsbury’s latest gimmick asks us to ‘twist’ our favourites by trying unusual ingredients in our dinners. Some of their online recipes didn’t seem so strange to me. Honey in a stir fry? Not exactly novel. And everyone who participates in Christmas knows cranberry sauce and melted cheese is a winner. So I decided to pick three more interesting recipes you’ll all know and love. And they all include pasta.

Day One: Pasta bake with yoghurt

Yes, you read correctly, apparently the yoghurt makes for a creamy tomato sauce. As I dutifully go to my nearest Sainsbury’s and purchase my ingredients I bitterly note that Tescos would have been far cheaper.

Nevertheless, I come home and spend a good 15 minutes chopping veg for my lunch. The result looks Instagram worthy. Apart from the chopping this recipe seems fairly easy and smells great as it’s coming together. Putting the yoghurt in turned the once tomatoey pasta watery and a gross shade of pink, but it smelt better than it looked.

Oh, and Sainsbury’s, 50g of cheese in a recipe? I used the whole 250g bag to coat the top evenly and I regret nothing. Stop shaming me with your unrealistic cheese standards. The resulting pasta bake is really tasty hot or cold and has a few vegetables in so your mum will be pleased. The yoghurt also adds protein to a veggie dish.

My cooking’s better than my photography, honest

Day Two: Mac and cheese with horseradish

Oh baby. I love macaroni and cheese and I LOVE horseradish. If anyone’s intimidated by the thought of making their own white sauce, don’t be. You need milk, flour, butter and cheese. That’s it. When the sauce is made it’s mixed with the pasta and baked.

Cheese and mustard are a known combination, and if I’m honest it seems to be more natural somehow than mustard’s cousin, horseradish. It adds a subtle heat which is much appreciated, but then you have a jar full of horseradish to eat. My suggestion is to mix a spoonful with some tuna to heat up a tuna melt, or just to make more mac and cheese. I must admit, I didn’t share this one around because I got hungry during the great British bake off. I’m only human.

Crusty and cheesy, and the pasta’s not bad either

Day Three: Spaghetti bolognese with coffee

This is the big one, the one that’s had the nation bamboozled. It involves adding instant coffee to your bolognese sauce to add ‘richness’. Surprisingly enough, nobody in my house has any instant coffee lying around so we use coffee grounds instead, which add some nice black flecks to the sauce.

The recipe is also very easy and involves chucking all the ingredients into the pot in the right order. The meal turns out to be the tastebud version of the colour changing dress. Some people can taste the coffee, some can’t.  But everyone agrees that it’s a rich and tasty dinner, so it’s definitely worth putting a little pep into your pasta.

Today is not my Dolmio day

These recipes turned out to be far less gimmicky than I imagined.  Each one was easy to make with no wildly expensive ingredients. I’d happily make each of these recipes again, so maybe you should try something  new today.