I had two cans of mushroom carbonara sauce sitting around. They came free when I bought two bottles of Prego pasta sauce.

The last time I used sauce from a can, my kids didn’t care for the taste. So what was I supposed to do with these two cans? Cook ‘em, of course .

I used:

• 2 cans of Prego mushroom carbonara sauce
• 1 large onion, diced
• 6 slices of back bacon, sliced long
• spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• dried parsley

Boil the spaghetti till al dente. In a non-stick pan, lightly fry the bacon in olive oil for about two minutes. Then add the onions and saute till they become translucent.

Pour in the carbonara sauce. Use a little water to rinse out the cans and pour that in as well. Bring to a simmer and add the spaghetti to the sauce. Mix well. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley.

I prefer mixing the spaghetti in the sauce while it’s still in the pan to spooning the sauce over the spaghetti because I find the sauce is more evenly distributed and sticks better.

Linguine or fettucine would’ve gone better with this sauce but I was fresh out of those so I used spaghetti instead. You can be really flexi with this and use any pasta you like or happen to have sitting around. Enjoy!

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My cousin’s kids practically grew up on macaroni and cheese. She swears it’s so easy it’s not even considered cooking. She throws a handful of cheese over some macaroni and sticks it into the microwave oven.

My kids have always refused to eat anything that even looks like mac and cheese so I’ve never had the occasion to make any. Never mind, I guess it’s not too late.

This week, Steev, my eldest, has suddenly decided he’s got a thing for mac and cheese after tasting it at Friday’s twice last month. I do agree it does taste pretty good but my girls still wouldn’t touch it.

My recipe is actually pretty simple. Here’s what I use:

• 5 handfuls of macaroni
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 teaspoons cornflour
• butter
• salt and black pepper to taste

I get a pot of water boiling. Salt it a little and add the macaroni. Meantime, I grease a deep baking tin with butter. When the macaroni is soft, I pour it into the tin.

I make a roue with cornflour and water, and pour it in. I would use milk but because of the recent melamine scare in China, I decide not to. So in goes the roue over the macaroni in the tin.

Then I pour the breadcrumbs in. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well with the mac. Top off with the cheese and bake at 180 degrees F for 25 minutes.

The smell is heavenly. Steev gobbled up this entire tin of mac and cheese for lunch. I admit the end result isn’t as rich and milkily cheesy as it’s supposed to be. Next time, I’ll use milk.

I make the simplest spaghetti in town. I don’t have the luxury of making my own red sauce so I cheat a little by using pasta sauce in a bottle. It tastes good, saves me time, serves my purpose, so what the heck !

What I use is:

• spaghetti, enough for 4 persons
• 350 grams or about 2 cups of Prego pasta sauce of your preferred flavor
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, chopped into small chunks
• 6-8 cherry tomatoes, halved
• olive oil
• parsley

I start off by boiling the spaghetti in lightly salted water till al dente. This shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.

While that’s happening, I happily cut the onions, carrot and tomatoes. I cut the carrot into small chunks and blanch it first for a reason.

Carrots are hard and take longer to cook. By blanching it, it’ll be half cooked by the time it joins the rest of the ingredients in the pan.

I drizzle some olive oil into a non-stick pan on medium heat and saute the onion till transparent. Then in go the tomatoes and blanched carrot chunks, followed by a good shake of the pasta sauce from the bottle and a sprinkle of dried parsley.

No, I don’t use the pasta sauce straight from the bottle, uncooked. Even though the pasta sauce is supposed to come with onions, garlic and mushrooms, I like to add more of my own.

Sometimes I add more herbs and some sugar to tone down the tartness of the fresh tomatoes. On a good day, I’d throw in broccoli flowrets and French beans as well. Notice I don’t add any salt at all because that’s already in the bottled sauce.

So yeah, that’s it and it took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Lunch is served.

This is definitely a great recipe to have at short notice. We observe two vegetarian days a month and sometimes it’s hard finding vegetarian dishes the kids like. At the same time, since the kids love this, it’s a good way for me to reduce our meat consumption.

I have half a bag of Tesco’s spiral pasta left. I bought them to try but they’re much softer than my regular Australian brand, San Remo. My kids, the picky eaters that they are, knew right away that it was a different brand.

Today I decided to camouflage the softness of the spiral pasta by using them in my pasta bake. My kids loved it so much they didn’t notice the difference at all. Haha, gotcha !

Okay, here’s what you need for this very simple pasta bake.

• 2 cups of fusilli, or spiral pasta
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, finely cubed
• 100 grams of ground pork
• 2 cups Prego pasta sauce
• 1.5 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• drizzle of olive oil
• dried parsley

I first boil the spiral pasta in lightly salted water. I’m not worried about keeping it al dente because I’m going to bake it afterwards.

While waiting for the pasta to boil, I prepare the sauce. Drizzle some olive oil on my non-stick pan to saute the onions, garlic, carrots and ground pork.

I add some water to soften the carrots before adding the pasta sauce. Bring to a quick boil, give it a quick stir and remove from heat.

I grease a baking pan lightly with olive oil. Next I throw in the drained spiral pasta, pour the sauce over it and stir to mix well.

Top off with a generous amount of the two cheeses and a quick sprinkle of dried parsley.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes. I turned off the oven but left the pasta bake in while I went to pick up my daughter from school. Twenty minutes gives the pasta time to absorb the sauce and for the cheese topping to brown a little more.

I had a fairly large pan (photo shows a quarter of my actual pan), enough to feed 3 hungry teens just back from school. The spiral pasta was soft and made a great base.

The dish wasn’t too meaty but had a bite to it. Although I used quite a lot of onions and garlic, the taste wasn’t overpowering. Very nice. Go ahead, give it a try .

I discovered All-Star Sports when my Scottish friend and I decided to have lunch at Midvalley Megamall. As the name suggests, it’s a sports cafe with giant TV screens and pool tables where sports fans congregate over a few beers. Presumably the bulk of their business would be after hours. But surprisingly, they’re also open for lunch.

My all-time favorite is their Fettucine Alfredo that’s practically swimming in this fabulous cream sauce, complete with shredded oyster mushroom, ham strips and olives. Trust me, it’s one of the best fettucine alfredos I’ve ever tasted. Don’t look at the price and don’t let the word ‘fattening’ enter your mind and you’re on your way to culinary heaven!

Their Pasta Ai Fungi is a lighter, vegetarian version with spaghetti and a mountain of black and oyster mushrooms. It’s less saucy than the Alfredo but has a distinct mushroomy fragrance.

For the non-pasta fans, they have a great Crispy Chicken with Rice. The onion and deep-fried chicken chunks cooked in sweet-sour sauce gives it a great crunch. Very nice.

My perception has always been that the food can’t be all that good at sports cafes. But All-Star has convinced me otherwise. They’re on the ground floor of Midvalley, just across from Starbucks.

I’ve been craving fettucine alfredo for a while now. But I dug around the kitchen and couldn’t find any fettucine, so I improvised with linguine. Although certain pastas go better with certain sauces, there’s no hard and fast rule on how you should pair them. I typically go with what I have in my fridge.

• linguine
• sausages, cut thinly
• canned button mushrooms, cut thinly
• garlic, chopped finely
• spring (green) onions, chopped finely
• cream
• parmesan cheese
• olive oil
• pinch of salt and black pepper

Cook linguine in a pot until al dente. Saute the garlic in olive oil for a few seconds. Then add sausages and mushrooms and saute lightly. Add in cream, the cooked linguine and parmesan cheese. Whack in salt, black pepper and spring onions. Mix well and serve hot.

This linguine alfredo is really easy to make. It turned out pretty good too even though I made the sauce thinner than I usually do. Linguine is narrower so the sauce doesn’t have to be that thick to coat.

Once in a while, I got to have my pasta fix. I’m not a big rice fan but pasta I can never get enough of it. Luckily a good pasta is not hard to find… if you know where to look.

California Express BBQ & Grill is a modest pasta bar tucked away behind the busy ready food section of Jusco at 1 Utama.

The ready food section is right across from the supermarket where they sell all kinds of ready-cooked meals you can grab and take home. If you walk right into the back, you’ll see this pasta bar with a counter and chairs and an open kitchen. It’s not hard to spot.

They serve Western food like fish and chips, footlong sausages, roast chicken and so on. But this, their Fettucine Alfredo is my all-time favorite. I love that its sauce is very light and the ham, mushrooms and chives makes a great combination.

I also like their Fettucine Carbonara. You can tell I’m a fettucine person (luckily it’s not spelt fattucine, that would be disastrous ). This is much creamier so I can’t afford to eat it too often.

This is a great little pasta place if you don’t want to overeat. Their portions are small so you won’t feel guilty when you’re done. Also very light on your wallet considering that this is real pasta we’re talking about.