27 Oct PASTA BUGS

Posted at 19:18h in FOOD, HALLOWEEN, KIDWRANGLING by

I’ve had this idea in my head for years but today I finally tried it and to my surprise…it worked! It’s a fun halloween food option that involves zero sugar (ok, a bit of colouring, but at least it’s savoury!). Decorate your dinner with a few pasta bugs. It can be a bit fiddly, so I wouldn’t recommend making a whole bowl of them, maybe just a few to garnish your spaghetti with creepy crawlies.

Here’s how you do it.

  1. Cook the shell pasta in water with food dye until it is half cooked. It needs to be soft enough to be able to stick the raw spaghetti through. But not too cooked or else it will spilt and come apart.

2. Take the shells out and leave them to cool. Then thread the spaghetti pieces through to make legs. It helps if you twist the spaghetti as it goes in.

3. Use a small shell for the head. Stick a piece of spaghetti through the head piece and body piece to attach the two sections together.

4. If you fancy it, you can stick the antennae pieces all the way through from the top of the head, then out the body to form the back legs. This will keep it together even more tightly.

5. For a simpler version, just thread the dry spaghetti through the little shells to make mini bugs.

6. Pop them back on the pot. Cook them a little longer, but not too long or it will come apart. It should be slightly under done when you take it out so it’s stronger.

7. I served mine with plain spaghetti (dyed red for fun) and stirred some garlic butter through with salt and pepper. The kids were chuffed enough with the colours and weren’t that bothered with having no sauce.

Let me know if you give this a go! I’d love to see how it looks with squid ink pasta.

Words & photography: Emma Scott-Child