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#DIET: Easy to prepare wholesome weekday meals

IF you're a full-time working parent, preparing a healthy, wholesome meal for your family after a long day at the office can be challenging.

The idea of chopping and preparing multiple ingredients or cleaning up the kitchen after meal preparations puts us off cooking.

A simple option is to choose easy to prepare meals which require less time and effort in the kitchen.

Pasta is an obvious choice because it can be prepared quickly and easily in multiple ways, with fewer pots and pans to wash up afterwards.

Cooked pasta can also be refrigerated and reheated very well, making it ideal for pre-prepped meals, and as leftovers for lunch boxes.

Alce Nero's range of organic food includes pasta and pasta sauces. The brand's organic pastas are bronze drawn for a rougher and more porous pasta, ideal for sauce absorption and made using organically grown durum wheat with no preservatives or artificial substances such as sugars.

The pastas are also made in Italy to be low in fat and sodium, high in protein and are a good source of dietary fibre.

Here are some recipes crafted using Alce Nero products and developed by Retna Vijayan, a business owner and mother-of-three, who cooks dinner for five every weeknight.

All recipes can be tweaked to suit vegetarians by omitting the meat or seafood.

For speedy preparation, frozen seafood and prepared meat is used. The sauces contain lots of herbs to increase fibre content.

Creamy Tomato Clam Spaghetti

Prep time: 10 minutes, cook time 10 minutes, serves 5 pax

Add Alce Nero Organic Spaghetti Tricolore to a pot of well salted boiling water. Cover and cook for 6 minutes or al dente. At the same time, pan fry garlic, chopped parsley and clams until the clams are browned.

Reserve some browned clams for garnishing. Using cooking tongs, add the al dente pasta to the clams, stir in halved cherry tomatoes and Alce Nero Organic Pasta Sauce with Vegetables, allowing the mixture to heat through. Stream in cooking cream while stirring. If you prefer more sauce, add half a cup of the salted pasta water and stir until well-incorporated.

Plate up, garnish with some parsley and the reserved clams. Grate some cheese over the pasta if you like it cheesier.

Shrimp in Basil Tomato Sauce Alphabet Pasta

Prep time: 10 minutes, cook time 10 minutes, serves 5 pax

This shrimp in basil tomato sauce is simple to prepare and pairs well with any pasta.

Prepare 500gms of Alce Nero Organic Kids' Pasta Alphabet Shapes according to the pack. Drain and reserve.

In a large, flat-bottomed pan or skillet, melt butter with olive oil. Add garlic and sauté for about a minute. Next, add chicken stock, red pepper flakes, black pepper and bring to a simmer for 2 minutes or until the liquid is reduced by half. Add shrimp and sauté until lightly pink.

Stir in basil and pour in a bottle of Alce Nero Organic Pasta Sauce with Basil. Heat through.

To serve: On a large platter, mound the pasta. Pour over the shrimp in tomato sauce. Garnish with more basil.

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