Results tagged “pasta”

You’ve likely seen products like “spelt spaghetti” or “quinoa spirals” while perusing the pasta section of your grocery store. These alternatives to refined white pasta typically provide more nutrients and fiber and impart unique tastes and textures. When consumed in moderation, pasta has its place in a nutritious diet. A healthy serving of pasta is generally about ½ cup cooked, or about ¼ of your plate, which is a whole lot less than what we typically consume. Think of pasta as a great side dish to accompany lean meat or fish and a big helping of veggies. Here is a quick run-down of some commonly sold alternative grain pastas.

Now that the farmer’s markets are filling up with tomatoes, it’s time to start finding great recipes to use them up. At this time of year, we prefer relatively simple, unadorned recipes - all the better to show off the freshness of the produce. This recipe is an adaptation of an old standard, usually made with vodka and a ton of cream. We use much less cream, to allow the flavors of the tomatoes and shallots to come through. Using grappa, instead of vodka, gives the pasta a kick AND some extra flavor. If you don’t have any grappa, we’d recommend using brandy.

Home-made, fresh pasta is certainly the best kind. Unfortunately, we don’t have a pasta machine, or a ton of spare time, so we usually settle for dried. While shopping for produce, we ran into Pasta Puttana (translation: Pasta Whore) at the indoor version of the Green City Market, back in April. Owner Jessica Volpe was standing behind her entirely empty table and, when we went up to beg for scraps, she had nothing left. It was only 11 AM and the market had only been open for a couple of hours - we probably should have known better. Clearly, we aren’t the only people who love her products.

    

Over the past six months, we’ve developed a love of dark, leafy greens. Kale, Collards, Chard - we like all of them, and somehow they’d never crossed our path before. This recipe uses another under-utilized leaf: Beet Greens.

This pasta is amazing. Absolutely amazing. It’s not our recipe, so we can say that without sounding like a self-promoter. It’s from Wine Bar Food, by Tony and Cathy Mantuano (of Spiaggia) and it’s filled with some unlikely combinations (Anthony's visited recipes from Wine Bar Food for a "Simple Cooking" post before; please check out his take on the Mantuano's faux gras — Sudo.). Oranges? Raw tomatoes? Clams?

We might eat much more pasta than the average person. While we have a lot of great recipes in our arsenal, most of them follow the same basic pattern: make tasty sauce, boil pasta, put tab A in slot B and serve. This pasta recipe takes on a slightly different pattern, as the pasta finishes boiling in the wine sauce. This turns the pasta a deep burgundy and gives it a rich, slightly bitter flavor, complimented by the slight spice of the pepper.

Here at Chicagoist, we like to keep it simple. On a freezing cold night like the ones we’ve been having lately, that means making tasty meals out of what you have in your refrigerator and your pantry. We don’t know about all of our readers, but if our pantry is any example, we don’t have quail eggs, fresh tarragon and homemade pasta sitting around after a week of avoiding grocery shopping. We usually do have onions, garlic and canned tomatoes. This pasta dish will impress any dinner guest. More importantly it’s quick, delicious and all the ingredients are things that any home cook has on hand. It takes about 20 minutes, but no one else needs to know that.