Marinara Sauce

Marinara is a very easy sauce that only requires a few ingredients. You can make a winter version following this recipe, or you can make a summer version using peeled fresh tomatoes and fresh basil in season. It makes a pretty dish when you use the sauce as a bottom layer and put some ravioli on top garnished with some parmegiano reggiano and some parsley. We also like it with tortellini or gnocchi.

This recipe makes a large batch, so you can freeze the extra in 32 ounce containers and pull one out for a quick mid-week meal.

Equipment

6 quart pot with heavy bottom
sharp knife Read more

Pasta Primavera

All the prep work on my summer garden has me fixated on vegetable dishes. As I scooped more seeds from bell peppers and eggplant today, my mind drifted towards a pasta primavera for dinner. I love this dish in the summertime with fresh peppers and eggplant. You can adapt the dish based on whatever fresh vegetables you have on hand.

[Updated July 30, 2008]

Equipment

sharp knife
8 quart pot
6 quart pot Read more

Pasta Pomodoro

I started my garden planning yesterday. I scooped seeds out of a few beautiful red, yellow, and green bell peppers and a few roma tomatoes and laid those out to dry for starting in a day or two. My three-year-old son helped me seed some flats with herbs and water them. And I’m going to pick up an eggplant and some grape tomatoes soon and save the seeds from those for planting.

All this garden prep makes me think of fresh tomatoes in my summer garden, which also makes me think of my favorite pasta dish. The flavor of fresh tomatoes sauteed with garlic and olive oil and tossed with basil chiffonade is one of my favorites from summer. It’s not summer yet, but I found a good deal on some nice roma tomatoes at the market yesterday, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make this dish. Read more

Pasta Thing

The first time my future husband made this dish for me, I asked him what it was called and he said, “It’s just a pasta thing.” The Pasta Thing can be anything you want it to be … the recipe varies based on whatever we happen to have in the pantry. We alternate between an Italian or Mexican version.

Equipment

4 quart sauce pan
8 quart pot
9×13-inch baking dish, lightly coated with cooking spray Read more

Michael’s Spaghetti and Meatballs

We usually have some kind of pasta for Sunday dinner, and this is my husband’s favorite. He takes over the kitchen and makes the sauce and the meatballs. His philosophy is always to err on the side of more flavor, so he piles on the garlic and onions. He makes his meatballs using a pan saute method, and then drops them into the sauce while it cooks so that the character of the sauce is infused into the meatballs. The sauce is a chunky garden-style, with plenty of mushrooms, onions, peppers, and olives. We use fresh ingredients in season and canned or dried out of season. We often double the recipe and then freeze the sauce and meatballs in 32 ounce containers to pull out for quick meals.

Equipment

3-5 qt mixing bowl
#40 scoop
frying pan
sharp knife
6 qt stock pot Read more

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

In the summertime, our garden is filled with the scent of sweet basil. We usually try to devote an entire raised bed just to basil. We use it fresh in dishes such as this pesto throughout the summer and into the fall. When we near the end of season, we cut down all the remaining stalks and spend an afternoon making different kinds of pesto and freezing it for the winter. We usually make several batches of this so that we can pull it out for a quick meal, and the wonderful flavor always reminds us of our summer garden.

[Updated: October 19, 2008]

Equipment

food processor Read more

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