Sidebar: I am SO happy you post that fennel salad, because I have fennel and parsley in the house!
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That salad is fantastic.
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Love a nice rich gravy/sauce or a well made Bolognese.
The veggie pasta is delicious but my GF won’t try it so I am left to eat it when I can. This was last night’s after work monstrosity with salami, garlic, oil and a bit of leftover steak. Not bad for 1 am meal.
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When I was growing up there was spaghetti with my mother’s rceipe (though I suspect it came from my Puerto Rican father’s side of the family, since it had vinegar, olives, and capers–a.k.a. alcaparrado). There was also egg noodles with cottage cheese, sugar, and cinnamon (definitely from my mother’s side).
These days I make pasta with marinara sauce (Classico or my own, depending on time), Alfredo sauce (Classico), or ricotta-walnut sauce.
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The newest pasta to me, that I really enjoy, is Sopa Seca.
I was also making a lot of Greek-inspired mac & cheese, with added feta, dill, greens a while back.
I make orzo with tomato, shrimp and feta often. I grew up eating giovetsi with orzo- but that is a slow dish, not a quick pasta.
I really don’t jarred red sauce much. I wouldn’t buy it if I was I only cooking for myself.
For a quicker version of something that tastes like pastitso, this is a good recipe. It’s one of the only Rachel Ray recipes I’ve made, and it was a keeper for me. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rachaelraymag.com/.amp/recipe/beef-and-feta-pasta-bake
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I almost always prepare my pasta sauce in the sauté pan where I’ve boiled dried pasta, using the low water method described here. I save a cup of the concentrated starchy cooking water to use in the sauce.
For example, slivers of garlic, halved cherry tomatoes, tomato paste, and crumbled dried oregano (I like the branch type I can buy at the Greek market) get a quick sauté in olive oil. Then the pasta—and enough cooking water to combine everything—get added back into the pan. I’ll add a dab more olive oil or butter at the end, off heat, to enrich. Variations using this technique are pretty much endless.
When I do cook fresh pasta, I go back to the traditional method of lots of water brought to the boil.
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My favorite pasta that Mrs. P makes is her rabbit pappardelle with fresh shaved orange rinds.
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Outstanding! Those additions look delicious.
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Thank you. I don’t make this dish often but we love it. I always have anchovies available and will often add them to sauces for an extra umami kick.
That fennel salad is one of my favorites. It’s a riff on Porta’s grilled octopus and fennel salad.
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It’s very Sicilian and has Arab roots. Pasta with sardines is one of the top Sicilian classics. It might shock you to know that this dish also contains sultana/raisins.
I have both sardines and smoked sprats and use either when I feel like it.
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I didn’t grow up in the northeast and don’t recall much pasta until my dad retired (to California). Then my mom used to make pasta with a red meat sauce.
My go-tos now are any kind of pasta with a homemade bolognese, or a nice lasagna when I have time.
And lately I have been flashing back to my high school days and enjoying (God help me) instant ramen.
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I enjoy ramen too and when I was traveling all the time decent ramen was easier to find than decent pasta! In the truck, I could quick cook ramen with a hit of toasted sesame oil and hot sauce without hesitation.
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Carbonara
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Growing up, we had spaghetti with a red meat sauce, lasagna, Kraft Mac and cheese, and “noodle pudding”, which was egg noodles, sour cream, cottage cheese, and canned peaches.
We don’t eat a lot of pasta now (we eat pretty low carb), but sometimes we have Rana tortellini with pesto (like tonight!). I occasionally make lasagna or pasta with a red meat sauce. I’d like to make more complex pasta dishes like many of you make, but my husband isn’t a fan.
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Russian mom? No kidding! I’d love to hear more. That plus the other side being Italian makes for a very interesting fusion cuisine at home I would imagine. The foods in both places seem quite disparate. My entire fam is Russian - Odessa. I grew up with so many pickled and preserved things. My American husband likes but doesn’t love Russian food. To him, there is not enough fresh, but he recognized that that’s life in a cold climate.
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Yes to the noodles with cheese and sugar. For us it was Farmers cheese and not cottage, but major yum as well as nostalgia.
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That’s kugel for sure!
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Building blocks of kugel, but not kugel, which is bound with eggs and baked. Bonus points for adding pineapple. Ours was just noodles, farmers cheese, sugar.
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Growing up in a Russian household, pasta was not really a thing for us. Sometimes - rarely - we had it with some jarred red sauce or some farmers cheese. Mostly it took the shape of filled pasta - vareniki with potato or cheese or pelmeni with meat.
As an adult running my own household, we have pasta all the time, every which way. Our biggest challenge is a kid who hates cooked tomato, so I’m always looking for something interesting to sauce with instead. We had positive responses to using the Moosewood carrot soup recipe as a pasta sauce, particularly when we also added in some crispy bacon or sausage bits.
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Pasta to me will always be a blank canvas awaiting an artist
And though i have never made it, this one for fun (and btw great movie with the best, and possibly only, making-of-scrambled-eggs scene):
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