Fresh Summer Garden Pasta

I made note of an Ina Garten pasta sauce recipe in my first blog entry and, while I linked directly to her Food Network recipe, I thought I would extrapolate and give my take on a cheap, easy, and VERY delicious pasta.  Even for people who can't cook, you can make this and look like a champ!

While Ina Garten uses cherry tomatoes, and they are most certainly the best choice for this pasta hands down, regular tomatoes can also be used, but try to use the on the vine tomatoes, or tomatoes that are as fresh as possible.  It really makes a difference with the flavour.  Also, don't store the tomatoes in the fridge, it makes them have less taste.  Instead, keep them in a bowl on the counter or in a cupboard uncovered.  This goes for onions as well, storing them in the fridge makes them much less potent and they lose a lot of their flavour.  Regular tomatoes on the vine cost much less than cherry tomatoes, so if you don't have access to them, or want to keep your meal even cheaper, regular tomatoes are fine here.  Although do be sure that you treat yourself to the cherry tomato version sometime, just slice each one in half and use as I do with regular tomatoes in this recipe.

I was fortunate enough to be able to pick fresh basil and as many cherry tomatoes as were ripe from my mom's garden, which made for a very fresh tasting pasta sauce.  Did I mention that this sauce is NO COOK, again, ridiculously easy.  Because this recipe is no cook, do not try to substitute for dried basil, it will not taste good.  Make this only when you can find the fresh stuff.

Serves 4
Ingredients:
6 on the vine tomatoes diced (or 2 pints of halved cherry tomatoes)
1/3 cup olive oil
6 cloves of finely chopped garlic
A large bunch of basil (About 10 leaves, sliced)
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 lb of dried pasta (use spaghetti, linguini, or angel hair - something long and thin)
1 cup of grated cheese (parmesan would work, so would any other hard cheese - even white cheddar would be good.  Don't use orange cheddar, that just seems like an unnatural combination)
1 cup of cooked pasta water
Salt and pepper

Directions:
In a large heatproof bowl, dice tomatoes, mince garlic, and slice basil.  Add to the bowl.  Add 1/4 cup of olive oil, a large pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Stir the ingredients together and let them sit in the bowl on the counter at room temperature.  Cover with plastic wrap.  This recipe works best if you can let it sit for a couple of hours (4max), however, it is still tasty if you just prepare it and eat it right away, but give it about 10-15 min to sit so that the salt draws out some of the moisture in the tomatoes and the flavours can meld.

Cook the entire package of pasta in boiling water according to package directions.  Before draining reserve about a cup of the water that it cooked in.  Drain pasta and add noodles directly to the large bowl containing the tomato basil mixture and toss.  Add in 1/2 cup of the pasta water and see if you need more to stretch the sauce at all.  If so, use the full cup.  Sprinkle in most of the cheese (reserve some for topping the individual bowls) and toss to melt.

When serving add the noodles to the bowls and then scoop out extra tomato basil mixture and some of the sauce and pour over noodles.  Top with the leftover cheese.

This recipe is so fast and easy, you'll love it and it's quite easy on the wallet too.

Enjoy!

Weekend Indulgences

We made it!  Not entirely a huge accomplishment, but we ate well as vegetarians this week and were rewarded with some burgers and bbq this weekend at a friend's.  It was a nice treat.  When we returned Sunday night we realized meat was still on the menu if we chose so I went with a pasta with chicken brown butter sage cream sauce.  The recipe came right out of my very own brain and it was completely delicious!

Ingredients
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp olive oil
4-5 torn sage leaves
4 bone in chicken thighs
4 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
6 chopped mushrooms (brown or white)
3/4 cups milk (1%)
3/4 cup chopped zucchini (I used patty pans)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 cup pecorino romano (or any hard cheese)
Salt and pepper
Enough pasta for 4 people. I used spaghetti.

Sautee onions in 1 tbsp of olive oil for about 5 minutes.  Add chopped mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes.  Add whole bone-in chicken thighs and lower the heat.  Cook chicken thighs for about 7 minutes per side.  Meanwhile in another small pot melt butter on medium heat.  Once the butter is melted it will begin to brown, watch it carefully and as soon as it turns brown add torn sage leaves and fry for about 30 seconds.  Add the flour and cook for about 1 minute before whisking in milk.  Simmer milk and add chopped garlic cloves to the milk mixture.  Cook the milk mixture until thick and then add it to the pan with the chicken, onions and mushrooms.  Add red pepper flakes and zucchini to the pan and season with salt and pepper to taste.

While sauce is simmering with the chicken boil a pot of water for the pasta and cook until al dente.  Save about 1 cup of the cooked pasta water.  Drain the pasta and add the reserved cup of pasta water to the white sauce pan.  Mix well before adding the noodles to the pan.  Once everything is together in one pan, mix together well and cook for about 2 minutes so that the pasta can absorb all of the flavours.  Add the grated pecorino romano cheese and serve.

The sauce is creamy without being heavy and is a beautiful light brown colour.  This was a fantastic quick meal that I made with what I had on hand.  It was satisfying to eat such a great meal after traveling home from our weekend away and easy enough that I didn't feel like it was too much work.

This week it's back to school starting Tuesday and with 2 teachers in the house it should be a challenge to eat vegetarian only for school lunches and quick dinners.  I'll take today to brainstorm some fast and easy ideas.  Something tells me that with the enormous tub of kimchi in my fridge that it's going to be a Korean week.  Looking forward to it.