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Cover of The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces

I just love making pasta dishes with vegetables!  Growing up we had pasta at least once a week or twice.  Of course we didn’t call it pasta, we called it macaroni and instead of sauce we called it gravy.  I don’t remember any pasta or macaroni dishes made with vegetables either. We had tomato sauce with meatballs or spare ribs and often had shells (my favorite), rigatoni, ziti, mostociolli and spaghetti.  On Fridays we sometimes had linguine with clam sauce  or linguine with marinara sauce or with olive oil and garlic and of course we had lasagna now and then.  But never a meal with pasta and vegetables.  I wonder if this was because it was more American to eat your macaroni mainly with meat or was it because we could.  My grandfather  told me that when he was growing up in Italy, maybe they ate meat with their macaroni on Sundays.

I didn’t discover the world of pasta and vegetables until much later in life.  I came across a cookbook unlike the other Italian cookbooks I owned;  It is The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces.   This cookbook embraces the art of pasta sauce created with vegetables, fish and meat.  I learned to love Linguine al Limone (linguine with lemon),  and Pasta e Ccci, ( chick peas and pasta broth), Paglia e Fieno alla Ciociara (straw and hay) just to name a few. The recipes seem exotic yet are made with common ingredients – I wonder if this is what my grandfather ate every day in Italy?

PENNE with SWISS CHARD and CAULIFLOWER

4 TBS Olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1 head cauliflower cut into small flowerets

Salt to taste

1# penne

4 cloves garlic sliced thin

1# Swiss Chard roughly chopped

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

4 oz grated pecorino romano

Boil water, add cauliflower, salt, cook 3 minutes.  Remove cauliflower, set aside and reserve 1/2 cup of water.

Heat oil in large skillet, add onion – cook medium heat until golden brown about 15 minutes.

Then add penne.

Add garlic to skillet, cook 2-3 minutes till lightly browned, then add Swiss Chard, cook till wilts, about 3 minutes.  Stir in cauliflower and red pepper and reserved water.  Season 

Add cooked penne, toss and dust with grated cheese.

Recipe from Tom Meyer, New York Times

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Cover of The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces

TASTY TIDBITS TUESDAY

I love pasta! Hands down, other than ice cream I love pasta best.  Growing up, I never ate pasta; No-we ate macaroni and gravy, spaghetti and meatballs.  Macaroni was/is pasta or rather pasta is macaroni.  Some people think other than spaghetti and linguine all those other shapes are not pasta – what would they be?  My own husband thinks the only pasta is linguine and I keep telling him, it’s not the correct macaroni for every sauce.  When you are reading a recipe in an Italian cookbook or at an Italian restaurant and the dish description specifies a pasta such as shells, or rigatoni or mezzani – there’s a good reason why so.  Some sauce require a thicker, chewier pasta or one with lines so the sauce can cling to pieces.  Ahhhh once again I have digressed a bit.

What I really wanted to say was how much I enjoy preparing vegetarian pasta dishes.  There are so many possibilities and as you can probably deduce from previous posts, most of the pasta recipes I post are vegetarian.

I remember once asking my Grandfather about whether or not when he was young and still living in Italy, how did his mother prepare macaroni.  I wanted to know about meatballs, Bolognese sauce, sausages and spare ribs…well he quickly set me straight and told me that “IF” they were lucky there was meat in the pasta once a week, most likely on Sunday.  You know about Sunday Sauce don’t you?  Well another post at another time.  Growing up in my Italian-American household, I don’t remember ever eating pasta with anything other than meat or seafood EXCEPT on Fridays when we would have Linguine Aglio e Olio, which is linguine prepared with olive oil and garlic.  So as an adult I decided to explore the world of pasta without meat and a whole new world opened up for me.  I highly recommend the cookbook, The Top One Hundred PASTA SAUCES by Diane Seed.  It is replete with great pasta recipes with vegetables as well as a few meat and fish sauces.

Roasted Red Onion and Squash Pasta

2 medium red onions, cut into 6 wedges, layers separated

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, cut into 3/4″ pieces (I buy already prepped)

1 TBS coarsely chopped fresh sage leaves ( I used 2-3)

1TBS olive oil

coarse salt and pepper

1/2 # short ribbed pasta such as rigatoni

1/4 cup grated Fontina cheese (2 oz)

Preheat oven 450 degrees

On rimmed baking sheet, toss onions, squash, sage leaves with oil.  Season with salt and pepper.  Arrange in single layer and roast until tender, about 25 minutes, rotating sheet and tossing  vegetables, halfway through.

Meanwhile, in large pot, cook pasta till tender to preference.  Reserve 1 cup of pasta water;  drain pasta and return to pot.  Add vegetables and cheese and toss to combine, adding enough pasta water to create a thin sauce that coats pasta.

Related Articles

• Healthy Pasta Recipes for Winter (eatdrinkbetter.com)
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