Spinach Pesto

Yes, another vegetable recipe. Maybe I should rename this blog "Desserts and Vegetables, and sometimes a little pasta." But, with my garden sprouting miniature vegetable plants and the opening of the Farmer's Market this month, who isn't excited about vegetables?

This recipe is excellent for several reasons. You can make it with baby spinach from your own garden, or with the full-grown spinach you can buy at the grocery store all winter long. It's a great compromise for those who love the taste of spinach, but not the texture. It's far cheaper than basil for making pesto. And last, it's a great way to fool your kids into eating their veggies: "No, Johnny, it's not a vegetable-- it's pasta!" (Not that I would know this from experience-- you'll have to ask Elizabeth if this worked for her)

Plus, if you want to continue on the Italian food theme, look how pretty the ingredients are:

Tomato Sauce with Butter & Onion

This sauce is the easiest yet. So easy in fact, that I don't always make homemade pasta to go with it. (shhh, don't tell anyone!) But seriously, if you are looking for a simple dish you can make with ingredients you already own, try these three:

Yes, that's it. Just tomatoes, butter and onion. Pour a can of whole peeled tomatoes, with their juice, into a pan. Add 5 tablespoons of butter and half an onion (peeled, but not cut). Simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes until thickened. Stir occasionally to break up tomatoes.

Discard the onion (save it for later!), and serve over cooked pasta. This serves 3-4 people, depending on how much sauce you like on your pasta. Even your pickiest of eaters will like it!

Yum.

Bruschetta Chicken Pasta

Due to a very busy month of March, and a bunch of pictures on my camera being accidentally erased, I have had a dearth of pasta-sauce posts. But, due to a lazy weekend in which I had time to enjoy breakfast in bed, put together a 500 piece puzzle, and bake yummy chocolate awesomeness, I finally had the chance to make another Saturday night pasta dinner! (Also, I washed a lot of dishes, thanks to our 1880's house with no dishwasher... pictures of that later, maybe.)

Bruschetta is really a summertime food, but thanks to a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese, it tastes pretty awesome in the winter too. 

My Dad started making this pasta when I was a teenager, probably as a result of something similar he had in a restaurant somewhere. It's always been one of my favorites and has made frequent appearances at birthday dinners. This pasta looks impressive, but is really very easy to make. Plus, all of the prep can be done ahead of time, leaving only the assembly for the last minute.

Making pasta with your Kitchen Aid

If you're one of those cooks who has some amount of time greater than 7 minutes but less than 4,000 years to create your pasta dish, then this might be the route for you. It's the delicious taste of homemade noodles meets the beauty of technological advances.

Step #1. Get a fantastic mother-in-law who buys you cool stuff, like this:


Step #2. Mix together some flour and eggs as directed here:


Step #3. Remove that funny little knob on the front of your mixer that you always wondered about and attach your pasta maker.



Step #4. Turn your mixer on one of the lowest two settings and feed your dough through a few times until it's nice a smooth and a uniform thickness. Look, I can even make dough with one hand and take a picture with the other:


Step #5. Turn the dial to a progressively higher number as you run your dough through again and again until the pasta is as thin as you like. If you try to do it all at once, though, you'll end up looking like this. So feel free to cut it into workable lengths.


Step #6. Change the attachment to the cutter of your choice and once again feed the pasta dough through on the slowest setting. As it comes out, simply cut the noodles to your desired length.


I cut mine over a cookie sheet and let them drop right down into a pile. Then just toss them with a little extra flour if they are too wet and let them rest on the counter until you're ready to cook them. They can also be dried out most of the way and then frozen if you want to do all this work ahead of time.


Step #7. Drop the noodles into boiling water - they only take 3 or 4 minutes to cook through!


Step #8. Top with your favorite meat & sauce combination for a pasta creation that will rival an Italian restaurant.

Pasta Month: Annie's Mac 'n' Cheese (aka: Nathanael remembers his bachelor days)

Nathanael Yellis

Most people do not have 4,000 years to make their own pasta. They go to the store and buy it. If they are bachelors, they forget to purchase sauce. Someone invented Annie's, and now people like this can buy pasta and cheese sauce in a handy box. Here's how to make it.

Goals: speed, minimization of dishes, and multi-tasking opportunities.

Ingredients:

Also one pot--it could be a used tin can, if you are comfortable putting that on the stove.

Hand-Crank Pasta

While you can spend an hour rolling and cutting your own pasta, a $35 machine can make your pasta in a fraction of the time. (Elizabeth will share later about how a more expensive gadget can make the process even faster-- but I'm happy with the cheap-easy version ;)).

A hand-crank pasta machine clips to your table, pull-out cutting board, or countertop. It rolls your pasta through one part of the machine, and cuts it through another.

Here is how it works:

Introducing: Homemade Pasta Month!

The month of March, along with warmer temperatures, spring rains, and flowers, also bring something exciting to Epicurable-- Pasta month!

I am fairly certain that there isn't a drop of Italian blood anywhere in our family's heritage, but for some reason, we do love our pasta. It can be made quickly for a weeknight meal, prepped ahead of time for dinner parties, or dressed to the nines for a fancy weekend dinner. What is not to love?

Well, ok, maybe not this:

Don't get me wrong, it will do in a pinch, and we certainly have a stock in our cupboard. But there is a much, much, much better way!

Homemade pasta tastes incredible, and requires just two ingredients: flour and eggs. This month, we will be featuring three ways to make homemade pasta -- by hand, with a hand-crank roller, and with a Kitchen-Aid attachment. We are pretty certain that once you try it, you will never go back to the box. 

Click below to find out how to make hand rolled pasta!