Spaghetti with Garlicky Greens

This quick and healthy weeknight supper has few ingredients but is surprisingly tasty. The confetti cut strips of swiss chard and kale blend in well with the spaghetti to make it easy to get a good bite. Cut and wash the greens while the pasta is cooking and this dish will come together in about 20 minutes. Omit the cheese and add some extra salt for a vegan version.

Rigatoni with Butternut Squash

This rigatoni has everything that I love about pasta with cheese sauce.  The thick and creamy sauce fills the pasta and bursts out when you bite into it.  It is inexpensive, comforting, and is ready quickly.  But unlike macaroni and cheese, it can be made completely dairy free and since the sauce is made mostly from pureed squash instead of cheese, it is a much more balanced, healthy meal.  I topped mine with some parmesan cheese and used 2% milk to thin the sauce, but the cheese is not needed and any kind of milk would work (soy, almond, lactaid, rice, etc.)  The sweet and salty in this dish is so comforting, and the fresh chopped basil adds some great dimension to the flavor.  PJ didn't believe me that there was no cheese in it!  Add some grilled chicken to this dish for an even heartier meal.

Pasta with Cauliflower and Spinach

Here's a quick and easy pasta dish that you probably could have thought of yourself, but you didn't.  That's my favorite kind of weeknight dinner recipe - something that you can practically perfect on the first try and that you know you'll like, but that you didn't have to think of on your own.  It's inexpensive and only takes 30 minutes or so to prepare.

This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Cooks Dinner.  It's a small book full of quick and simple recipes that you probably could have improvised on your own.  I'm a Bittman fan so I was excited when I found this book on the Give-Away Table in our lobby!  Apparently you can also buy it for five dollars on amazon.com.

Spring Pasta with Artichokes, Mushrooms, and Peas

Although this pasta is great with fresh spring produce, it can easily be made year round using jarred artichokes and frozen peas.  I was inspired to make it because I wanted to try the fresh English peas that have been appearing in our market lately.  They are available in pea pods or already shelled.  It was nice to eat fresh peas and they were pretty tender and flavorful, but peas lose their freshness so quickly that frozen peas are also a good way to go.

If you chop and saute the vegetables while the water is coming to a boil for the pasta, everything should come together in just about the time it takes to cook pasta!

Homemade Swiss Chard Gnocchi with Butter and Sage Sauce

Making gnocchi is similar to making pasta dough, but mashed potatoes are used in place of some of the flour in the dough.  The dough becomes more flexible than pasta dough, and it can be easily rolled into gnocchi shapes without a pasta machine using just the tines of a fork.  Here, big bunches of cooked swiss chard add more color and nutrition to the traditional recipe.

I made a double recipe of this swiss chard gnocchi and used half for my Skillet Gnocchi with Greens and Beans published last month, and then froze half of it.  To defrost, I let it sit out for about half an hour to and then I reheated it in a pan with brown butter and sage sauce, recipe below.

Skillet Gnocchi with Greens and Beans

Making gnocchi at home is far easier than making home-made pasta.  All you need to do is bake some potatoes, mash them up and mix them with basic ingredients for a quick dough, and then form them into more or less the shape of gnocchi.  There are no specialized machines or practiced skills needed.  See my recipe for homemade gnocchi here.

If you prefer to save time though and buy the gnocchi in the store that will still be good, too.  With store-bought gnocchi (or made-ahead gnocchi) this dish will come together very quickly for a fast weeknight supper. 

Soba Salad with Feta and Peas

Soba noodles are long, thin Japanese noodles made from buckwheat.  They are generally available in well-stocked grocery stores and in Japanese specialty food stores, or you can buy them in bulk on-line here.  Peas, feta, and Japanese noodles may sound at first like an odd combination, but they surprisingly compliment each other very nicely!

Spring has sprung here in New York City, for now at least.  After a long winter I always forget how freeing it feels to walk around outside without a heavy coat on.

Customizable Whole Wheat Linguine with Vegetables and Herbs

This is one of the easiest and tastiest ways I know to make a quick and healthy dinner. All you need to do is make a stir-fry of whatever vegetables you have in your refrigerator and then add it to whole wheat pasta. If you keep a box of pasta in your pantry then this is a great way to use up the vegetables that are left at the end of the week. I sometimes like to do the opposite, though, and I buy lots of vegetables specifically for this dish. Then for the rest of the week I not only have yummy leftover pasta to munch on but also a lovely assortment of raw vegetables to roast, steam, or saute for snacks and sides.

My husband is still about three weeks into recovery from an ulcer he developed around Christmas, so I am trying to cook very simple foods without a lot of spices, garlic, dairy, fat, citrus, tomatoes, vinegar....oy the list is too long. We've been doing a lot of veggie stir-fries over rice with fish or chicken, but putting the same stir-fry into a little bit of pasta is a great change! You'd be surprised how much wonderful flavor you get just from the herbs, veggies, and a good whole wheat pasta. This is a dish to play with - everything (except the pasta) is optional so if you don't like an ingredient or are trying to avoid certain foods feel free to look at the variations and customize the dish to your liking.