Pasta Primavera

Last fall some friends invited us over for dinner and served this dish . . . and I've been dreaming about it ever since. I got the recipe today and luckily had most of the ingredients on hand, so I changed my dinner plans and did not regret it for a second. This dish doesn't really have many seasonings, but it is somehow SO incredibly flavorful and delicious. I'm in love and so is everyone else in the fam.

Just a note on the ingredients. This is the type of dish that it's hard to go wrong with---you can really mix and match the ingredients here to customize it to what you have on hand and what your family enjoys. You MUST use pine nuts and asparagus and FRESH Parmesan cheese, however. Today I didn't have the fresh basil, so I made it without and that obviously changes the whole tone of the dish, but it was still delicious. So use it if you can (and if you like fresh basil, of course), but don't stress if you don't have it. I also think this would be amazing with some zucchini or yellow summer squash.


Pasta Primavera

4 Tbsp pine nuts
1 pound dried pasta of your choice (penne and rigatoni work well)
2-3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
20 cherry tomatoes, halved
15 (or so) fresh asparagus spears, bottoms trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieeces
4 (or so) carrots
1 cup green peas (thawed if frozen)
8 button mushrooms, sliced
4 Tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped
1/2 chicken broth
2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
grated Parmesan cheese

Heat a skillet over medium heat; add the pine nuts and toast, stirring continuously for 1 minutes; set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package directions.

While pasta is cooking, heat 2 Tbsp of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and cook the onions, stirring, for 6 minutes or until soft. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add tomatoes, asparagus, and carrots and cook, stirring regularly, for 2 minutes. Add peas, mushrooms, basil, broth, salt, and pepper; cover skillet and cook 5 minutes. Add remaining olive oil and toasted pine nuts; stir to combine all ingredients.

Drain cooked pasta in a colander, and put the vegetable mixture in the bottom of the empty pot. Top with hot pasta and toss together gently to combine well and heat through. Serve pasta topped with a little Parmesan cheese.

Spicy Chickpeas & Rice

Prep time: 30 min.

This "recipe" is the result of not having anything to eat for lunch and rummaging around for something to keep us from going to the grocery store hungry. Here's what I found:

• half a jar of garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• a tin full of spices
• basmati rice

I started off thinking "spicy" and ended up thinking "Indian." The result, as you might imagine, was both spicy and Indian. I used a heaping teaspoon of chili powder, which was definitely more than necessary. Our mouths were on fire throughout the meal. But it turned out well enough, so I'll try to give you the quantities I used so you can try something similar the next time you are out of food.

1 c. basmati rice

1½ c. chickpeas

½ t. chili powder

1 t. tumeric

1 t. cumin

1 t. curry powder

¾ c. plain yogurt

1 c. chicken broth

a little salt

Follow the instructions on the package for cooking your rice. (Or don't, since our package instructions called for a 3:1 water:rice ratio and we've found 2:1 to work better.) Put your chickpeas in a saucepan and salt the heck out of them until they taste like French fries. Add chicken broth. Stir in the other spices and yogurt.

I think it's best served in a bowl with the rice on the bottom and the other stuff on top. Note: go easy on the chili powder and taste it before you add too much. Sarah and I literally each drank an entire liter of water ourselves. It was really spicy.

One final note. I'm just kind of making up these quantities (and some of the ingredients). I don't know exactly how much of any of this stuff I actually used, since I didn't have a measuring spoon. Also, I think the yogurt I used was actually German quark and it might have been sweetened (not plain). And I'm sure this would be just fine with regular rice.

The moral of this recipe is: "There's probably something to eat somewhere in your house."