Pasta Tutto Giardino

Confession: I have a slight obsession with the cream-sauce-plus-tomatoes combination.  I am likewise fixated on fiber-consumption (don’t knock it till you try it, kids!).  So you can imagine my delight when I found this recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook, which makes all my creamy-acidic-fibery dreams come true.

Of course, this sort of description may not strike you as appetizing.  If I were in a grouchier mood, I’d suggest that this is a personal problem that you should work on.  But.  Since I aim to please, let me say this instead: this pasta combines the richness of a white-wine cream sauce with the tangy bursts of flavor characteristic of tomatoes, carrots, herbs and garlic, plus the rich nuttiness of whole wheat pasta.  Now that everyone’s on board, let’s proceed.

This takes a few different saucepans to make, so be warned.  (It turns out that making a roux in a pot filled with diced vegetables is not a good idea.)  The plus side  is that you can make it with whatever veggies you have on hand (it ain’t ‘Tutto Giardino’ for nothing, guys).  So here’s what I did:

First, saute the following in the biggest saucepan you have (later we’re going to toss the pasta in there, and believe me, you need some room):

• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 red or green bell pepper (or a combination thereof), diced
• Other veggies of your choosing (Moosewood suggests mushrooms, which are great in this.)

Season it (with salt and pepper, or if you’re me, creole seasoning)!  After the onions are translucent, add:

• 1-2 cups diced tomato (and, if you have it,  zucchini)
• 2/3 cup white wine
• 1 tsp dry basil
• 1 tsp dry majoram
• pinch of oregano (you can use fresh herbs for each of these, just increase the quantities to 1 Tbsp.)

Cover it, and in another pot, boil your wheat (or white, if you must) pasta.  While that’s going, start your roux in a separate saucepan.  For the roux:

• melt 3 Tbsp. butter
• Whisk in 1/4 cup flour
• Slowly add 1 1/2 cups milk, whisking constantly.
• Season it!

Once the roux is tasting good, pour it into the veggie mixture, plus about 1 cup frozen green peas and allow this to hang out for a minute or two.   Then add the pasta and toss.  Finally, add a few squirts of lemon juice to up the tang. (Yes, I said “up the tang.”)

Now.  Who says fiber isn’t delicious?

Spicy Eggplant and Rotini with Ricotta

I first made a version of this dish with my old roommate, Carolyn, when we were living in Boston.  Carolyn learned Italian cooking from her mom and grandma, and this dish really represents the best of Italian cooking: really simple, clean, yet bold flavors perfectly balanced with one another.  This version is slightly different than the original (which is even simpler), but still really, really good.

We started by dicing a large globe eggplant, putting it in a colander with a bit of salt (to draw out the bitter juices) and weighting it down with a heavy plate, to squeeze out the extra moisture.  I then sauteed the eggplant in a bit of olive oil with thinly-sliced yellow onions, a couple cloves of garlic, and diced tomatoes.  I also added about 2/3 of a jar of roasted tomato marinara sauce, dry basil (I prefer fresh, but hey, we do what we can), and a couple of teaspoons of red pepper flakes.  I then let the whole thing simmer for 10-15 minutes, while the whole wheat rotini  cooked.  Finally, when the pasta was drained and tossed with a bit of olive oil, we topped it with the eggplant and tomato mixture, finishing the whole thing with a dollop of ricotta cheese.

My favorite thing about this dish is how well the spicy eggplant and tomato sauce compliments the ricotta cheese–ricotta is one of those things that I usually only think to mix into other fillings, but in this application, you get to enjoy the mild (yet delicious) flavor of ricotta itself, while still appreciating how nicely it pairs with other tastes.  And it also has the added bonus of being ridiculously simple to prepare–so, victories all around.

Pasta with White Wine Cream Sauce

Things have been busy at the Philosophers’ house of late, so we haven’t had much time to cook anything worth sharing with you.  Last night, however, after a day of hard work (and a little fun), we decided it was high time for something delicious–but only if it were also simple and quick.

It was thus that we happened upon this simple-looking pasta dish, which packs quite a bit of flavor.

Don’t be deceived by its everyday looks; this pasta is much tastier than you might imagine.  It’s filled with great veggies, of course–peppers, onions, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes–but the real secret (as they say) is in the sauce.  It’s actually just a simple béchamel to start out–I whisk together equal amounts of melted butter and flour to form a roux, then gradually whisk in milk until it’s smooth and creamy.  This time, though, I substituted about a half a cup of Chardonnay for some of the milk, which gives the sauce a really nice hint of sweetness and acid, adding some complexity to what would otherwise just be a straightforwardly dairy taste.

I cooked the veggies in the sauce, and tossed the finished pasta in with it to coat.  I’m also a big fan of the combination of cream sauce and sun-dried tomatoes; the intensity of flavor adds a nice punch to the richness.  So in the end, this dish isn’t too complicated, but is definitely not your average meal.  And as a bonus–if you have things like wine and flour on hand, it only costs about $4 to make.

Penne With Italian ‘Sausage’

This is one of my favorite weeknight minimal-effort-required meals.  It’s reminiscent of both a traditional arrabiata sauce and one of those sausage-and-peppers-on-a-bun deals you might get from a vendor at a sporting event.  I happen to think that both of those things are delicious, so it was only a matter of time before they got together in my cooking, especially once I discovered Tofurky sausages.  As far as I’m concerned, Tofurky makes the best sausages around–they have a great texture, come in a variety of flavors (for this application I used the sun-dried tomato Italian sausage, but I’ve also tried the Kielbasa for Jambalaya), and are really, really good at outdoor cookouts.

Anyway, veggie sausage isn’t the most economical vegetarian food choice (a pack of 4 generally runs you around $5, depending on where you are), it’s still comparable to meat in terms of price and gives the added bonus of convenience and unique flavor and texture that you just wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.  I think that this pasta does a good job of showing off that uniqueness, while making more of it than just a bun could.

The whole thing was pretty simple, but tasty.  While boiling some whole-wheat penne (gotta get your fiber!), I sauteed some peppers, onions and garlic in olive oil.  Once these got a bit of color, I added the chopped sausage, a little Italian seasoning, fennel seeds, and dried chipotle chilies.  After the pasta was done, I tossed it in the sausage and pepper mixture with half a jar of store-bought marinara sauce, and added a handful of grape tomatoes at the last minute.  The results weren’t earth-shattering, of course, but they were pretty darn good–spicy, rich and tomato-y–for only 20 minutes in the kitchen.

Minestrone

Things are starting to get a little on the cool side in the evenings, which means that I’ve started to get a hankering for soup.  I love making minestrone in particular because it’s quick, cheap, flavorful, and has everything I want in a vegetarian meal (beans, veggies, and starch).  For this one, I started by sauteing yellow onion, carrots, new potatoes and garlic.  Once those started to get a little color, I added canned diced tomatoes and vegetable broth, and seasoned everything with an Italian seasoning blend, plus a little extra oregano and basil, salt and pepper.  And, in what I thought was a real bit of smart thinking, I added a handful of dried chipotle chiles to give the soup a smokiness reminiscent of bacon drippings.  After letting it all simmer covered until the potatoes were almost done, I added a can of kidney beans and some corkscrew pasta.  When the pasta was cooked, I tossed in a handful of frozen green peas for some extra color and sweetness, and in just a minute, the whole thing was done.

I love the heartiness of this soup–especially because it’s almost entirely vegetables–and the chipotle chiles really added a nice depth of flavor (plus a kick of heat) that I think had been missing from my previous minestrone attempts.  And it’s a good thing, too, since it seems that fall is not to be avoided…