Tue 8 Apr, 2003 10:22 pm
My dinner tonight was a quick fix of an old standby pasta, and it dawned on me that I could post the basic recipe here. While it is an old standby in its most formal clothes, it also is a quick and bonewarming meal.
so - FARFALLE CON SPINACI
you need at hand, for two people or one really hungry person...
1/2 lb of good pasta. Best for the dish is Farfalle by Da Cecco.
I have used fusilli (wrong), and chopped up fettucine (fine) and broken spaghetti (fine). Small rigatoni or orecchietti would work. Just don't pick the hunkiest pasta possible and if you don't buy italian, at least get american made from semolina.
Have at hand a good bunch of spinach, from grocer or yard; wash 3x, cut off lower stems, perhaps chop up and use some of the rest of the stems.
Have at hand two tablespoons butter, and one of olive oil.
as well as two garlic cloves, chopped.
Also have on hand some decent ricotta. I like the stuff in a pan from an ital market, fresh, or...the whole milk ricotta from Polly-O. My view is that you don't use that much, go ahead, get the whole milk.
If you have a lemon in the house, good. Slice it and have it at the ready.
Then
Boil a nice vat of water, and when bubbling happily, add your pasta, stir, and watch.
In a big fry pan, perhaps teflon, saute' the garlic in the butter and oil and add the spinach, cook until spinach wilts and shut off.
Take pasta out and strain when it is at a beginning al dente texture...and toss into the spinach mixture. Take two fat tablespoons...oh, up to a half cup, of the ricotta and mix in with pasta with low flame....
lift into prepared microwave-heated bowls, and squeeze lemon slice over top of dish....
Serve to people ready to eat it. No dawdling allowed.
This can be perked up with real parmigiano, but I like it without that well enough.
This, for me, is a dish that is sort of primal, I love it beyond reason.
Do you have any other comfort pastas that you feel that way about?
I buy a frozen tortolini stuffed with sundried tomatoes, basil and cheese. I love it and so do the little girls I care for during the week. It has flavor and sometimes I just drizzle olive oil over it. More often, I add a mexican style salsa. Most often I microwave some stewed tomatoes (packed with onions/garlic/basil/whatever) with olive oil and sprinkle some feta or romano on top.....
Your dish above sounds like it could become a new favorite!
I like tortelloni too....
the one above is something I am actually addicted to...
Try my new comfort pasta with snails. use Egg noodles or pasta with snails and artichoke hearts. Make the pasta and make a spicey snails in garlic chili with some artichoke hearts. Mix together and serve with Gravera Cheese.
MMMMmmmmmmmmm!!!
Pasta in Brodo (Pasta in Broth)
I recently made it with a home-made vegetable stock used tortellini ai tartufi (truffles - about twice the price of other fresh tortellini) - it was amazing!
Very easy and delicious - somewhere between a soup and a main dish - great for cold days and not too heavy (no fat in the "sauce" at all).
Don't eat pasta too often, so when I want comfort pasta, it is homemade fresh thick-cut noodles with a very slow-cooked bolognese sauce...mmm....if we don't get spring soon in Toronto, I just might have to make it
Heh, this is even better with the handmade truffle pasta that I get from Italy, but I am currently out of stock
I use DeCecco pasta, too, nothing but fresh is better (that I can find, anyway)
My most comforting pasta dish is pesto, made from the basil I grew over the summer, ground with garlic, pignole nuts, Peccorino Romano cheese and oil, and frozen in small batches. I had enough to last until February this year.
My next favorite comfort pasta is brocolli rabe cooked until it's very soft, with garlic, oil, a little chicken broth, and good sweet pork sausage slices over penne or fusili. Or rigatoni, wagon wheels, whatever, as long as it's DeCecco.
that brocolli rabe dish is very good using ricotta salad (sp?)(it's a hard ricotta cheese) instead of the sausage, just crumbled into the mixture before serving.
Ziti with garlic powder.
I'm a culinary genius.
My 3 comfort pastas are Kraft Mac & Cheese, my mother's baked mac & cheese (lots of cheddar and a crispy bread crumb top) and bowtie with a quick cream and extra parmesan sauce. If I'm feeling up to it I'll through some chicken or proscuitto in there too.
Dangit Sugar! How do you stay so slim?
Kraft Mac and Cheese....a true staple when I was young...always preferred Stouffers frozen mac and cheese though...
Slappy, always preferred my Ziti with Clearasil, lol
Macaroni with homemade cheese sauce (bechamel with about two cups of sharp cheddar slowly incorporated).
my oldest daughter just loves the kraft microwavable mac & cheese. i should buy stock in kraft
great thread osso!
most of the pasta recipies i know are from cooking shows or cookbooks. i change them to suit my families tastes. always looking for something new.
threads like this reminds me of what we don't have here. most indigenious chamorro's consider pasta as "american" food so the stores here don't bring many ingredients in to guam.
Of coarse Pasta with Ossobucco is a dream dish come true.
I love pasta. I could eat it everyday. I don't think I've ever met a pasta I didn't like.
My current favorite, besides good fettucini alfredo is:
Boil water, add your favorite pasta. (I use radiatore or bowtie)
Brown a spicy italian sausage, drain fat. Add some fresh sliced mushrooms, onion and garlic. Simmer. While that is doing its thing, prepare a package of Knorr Garlic Herb sauce mix. When you have it to the consistency you like, throw in the sausage/mushroom/garlic/onion mess. Stir. Hopefully your pasta is done. Put pasta on plate, load with sauce. Sprinkle with fresh parmesan and a little fresh ground pepper, if you like.
Not exactly a low fat or high class dish, but it sure is yummy.
Sorry not to have monitored this topic...I haven't been getting updates.
Oh, oh, yes I love making homemade pasta and using my Marcella Hazan recipe for a slow cooked Bolognese....when I make that, I double or triple the recipe, which makes it even a longer and slower cook...and then freeze the leftover in portions. It still tastes wonderful, which surprised me.
Algis, that would be good, the ossobuco and pasta...
Snails, well, I haven't had them in years, but I bet you're right about their being good like that. I might have to just try a smidgeon first though...
Tortellini with truffles, oooooooh.
On homemade pasta, I have made a fresh fettucine baked with three cheeses....but I prefer, for sheer heaven, the bolognese...
The spinach with farfalle recipe in the topic is a quickie recipe though, the kind of thing you can do fast when you come home from work tired...almost as quick as Kraft's boxed mac and cheese.
I absolutely love pasta. Pasta with spinach! Great!
I like to buy frozen spinach with gorgonzola or mozzarella cheese. Just heat and add pasta. Wonderful! And I can always have it at home.
Ossobuco with truffle pasta....(drools)....
So I just got back from a near week in NYC and I had my first ravioli with black truffles...very good. Still, I have this memory of a bruschetta with what I remember, perhaps incorrectly, as black truffles, in Perugia, that were more delicious in my mind's eye.
The Perugia bruschetta might just have been truffle oil on toast, but it was wonderful, and I didn't feel my world rock with these ravioli. Still, I am limited in my palate as I live with diminished Nose...and so my opinions on this may be way off.
I also had some goat cheese ravioli that were coated with a bit of leeks and duxelles in a reduction of balsamic vinegar. That doesn't sound so good as I type it, but it tasted fine, and I will play with these ingredients myself, although not perhaps in ravioli form. I am thinking a little butter wouldn't hurt. But first, I can't get goat cheese ravioli in my city....miles from Anywhere. I have made ravioli myself, but would rather not...
Will have to think about easier stuffed pasta thingies. Agnolotti?
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