Italian halal recipes

Italian home cooking depends on a few good ingredients: tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, beans and pasta. Most of it was always meatless or nearly so, which makes it one of the easiest European cuisines to cook halal. The cured pork and wine that some dishes call for are simply left out or replaced.

Our Italian recipes lean on the store cupboard. Sardine and olive penne puttanesca melts tinned sardines into a chilli and tomato sauce, and is ready in twenty minutes. A lentil and walnut ragù over wholewheat penne gives the slow-cooked feel of a meat sauce in under half an hour. Tofu, spinach and tomato penne brings a plant pasta to 40 g of protein, and a cannellini and spinach soup is done in twelve minutes.

There is a cheesy baked pasta with vegetables blended into the sauce, made for children who pick out anything green, and courgette noodles with chicken and basil pesto for a lighter plate. A garlic and lemon chicken with broccoli and peas is the quickest dinner here, fifteen minutes in one pan.

Each recipe gives its calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre per serving, worked out from its ingredients. How we work out our numbers