Posts Tagged Pasta

Baked Pasta

I needed some serious comfort food the other night, and baked pasta was on my mind.  It wasn’t the most photogenic dish I’ve ever made, but it was delicious and hit the spot.

I almost always make my own sauce because it’s easy and usually tastes better than jarred.  This time I was out of onions (the horror!) so I made a basic sauce by heating olive oil in a pot, adding 3 cloves of garlic and some crushed red pepper, cooking until it smelled fragrant, adding dried oregano, s&p, a big can of crushed tomatoes, and a small splash of leftover red wine.  I usually just cover it and let it simmer while I make the rest of the dish.

Next, I mixed about a cup or two of the sauce with the remains of a container of cottage cheese (maybe 1/2 a cup), about 1/4 of a brick of extra firm tofu (crumbled), and some cooked macaroni.  Any short-cut pasta will work here, I had a small amount of elbows on hand for far too long so I took the chance to use it up.  Topped it off with some steamed broccoli, grated cheese and baked it at 350 until the top was browned and crunchy.  A few fresh basil leaves on top made it feel a little classier than it really was.

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Work Week Meals

By the time I get home from work and go for a run, I’m usually ready to eat anything that looks even remotely edible that is put in front of me.  Thankfully, I’ve started making individual components during the weekend that I use to throw dinner together quickly during the week.

Those chickpea cutlets from the last post are awesome when warmed in the toaster oven and tossed with Frank’s Red hot on top of a spinach salad with zucchini and random farmer’s market vegetables.  I also threw some leftover baked sweet potato slices on top.

The Buffalo chickpea cutlets are also a good example of my theory that a lot of meat-based dishes taste good because of the sauce they are served with.

Another super easy week night dinner is homemade vegetable pizza.  I make this individual pizza in less than 10 minutes with the help of pre-made mini pizza shells that I find in the bread section of the grocery store near the pitas.

I top with sauce (I usually have homemade on hand, but use jarred by all means), vegetables, olives, and cheese if you feel like it.

One last quick meal: Pasta with bean balls and raw vegetables.  I made a full batch of bean balls (posted here) from Veganomicon, on the weekend, so for this meal I really just boiled some pasta, and topped it with the pre-made sauce and balls (tee hee), sliced some raw zucchini and threw some spinach on top. 

Excuse the crummy photo, smudged camera lense!

Excuse the crummy photo, smudged camera lens!

There’s no excuse to hit the drive thru when you can make tasty and healthy (not to mention much cheaper) meals like this in as little as 10 minutes!

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Artisan Pasta

The Spinach linguine that I picked up at the Farmers Market made for an awesomely light dinner.

I made a very simple sauce of lemon juice and zest, garlic, olive oil, red bell pepper, and sun-dried tomatoes.

Ingredients

Ingredients

The sauce came together in minutes!  It was one of the easiest and most flavorful dishes I have made in quite some time.  You could really taste all of the individual flavors, including the pasta!

Artisan Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Lemon

Artisan Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Lemon

[I admit, my pasta plating needs work if I'm going to be taking pictures.]

Usually flavored pastas taste like regular pasta to me, just with a different color–but this pasta was awesome!  It is certainly more expensive than traditional store-bought pasta, but with flavor this good, I’ll definitely be back for some more next weekend.

I had a glass of this Beaujolais with dinner, but it was just ok, I probably wouldn’t buy it again.  It was cheap though :)

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