Everyone loves pasta, in all its variety of forms and textures, and with all the ways it can be used to make tasty, healthy meals. What you may not have realized is that pasta lends itself to easy pasta dishes as well. There is really no end to the dishes that can be created using variations of a few simple ingredients. And if you like being creative in the kitchen – which most of us do – easy pasta dishes are the best, because you can try out new ideas and combinations with little if any chance of making something that no one wants to eat! Whether you’re cooking for two or twenty, easy pasta dishes are fun to make and will please even the most finicky eaters.
The place to start is at the beginning with the pasta. Different shapes of pasta have different textures when cooked, but you can’t go wrong with the usual favorites – spaghetti, fettucine, or linguine for the long kind, macaroni, penne, or rigatoni for the cut small tubular type, and bow-tie or spirals for the occasional exotic dish. Cooking pasta is an art in itself, but I like to use the energy-saving method whenever possible. Bring the desired amount of pasta (in plenty of water, naturally) to a boil, let it boil for 5 minutes, then cover it tightly and remove it from the heat. Let it stand for 20 minutes, stir and drain. To get the firmness you like will take a bit of experimentation, but this method usually works out just fine.
The next ingredient to consider in easy pasta dishes is the type of sauce. Tomato-based sauces are always welcome at the table, and there are so many already-made varieties to choose from these days that you really can’t go wrong. If you don’t like the prepared sauces, you can of course make your own, but it won’t be as easy. There are also creamy and cheesy sauces available already prepared, and these can be useful too. But making your own cream sauce is pretty easy, and I usually go for home-made if possible. Just use some whole milk or cream, real butter, and grated parmesan or romano cheese, season to taste, and proceed with other ingredients if desired. If you add some ricotta it will make the sauce even creamier and more sinful than it already is. Adding garlic, either minced fresh, powder or salt, and a dab of cooking sherry can make an ordinary pasta dish almost elegant. Then there is the no-sauce option, which really isn’t no sauce at all, but just seems that way. In this variation you melt some butter in the pasta pot while the pasta is draining, add some minced garlic and put the pasta back in and stir. Sprinkle some grated cheese on it and serve one of the easiest pasta dishes.
Just about any vegetable you can think of can go into easy pasta dishes. Well, maybe not brussels sprouts (at least I’ve never tried it), but adding your favorites to any of the sauces will make it a different dish. Onions, peppers and mushrooms are the most popular to add, but broccoli, spinach, carrots, peas, and even green beans can help you come up with a unique dish. Just add the cooked vegetables to the sauce type of your choice and serve with the pasta. For vegetarian pasta lovers, you really don’t need anything else in your easy pasta dishes.
But there are meat-lovers out there who will insist that without meat, a pasta dish is really just a side dish, nothing more. My mother used to make what she called goulash (completely unauthentic, by the way) which consisted of the following: macaroni cooked soft, a can of chopped tomatoes, sauteed chopped onions, and ground beef. That was an easy pasta dish, however plain, but without the hamburger, I’ll have to agree, it would have been just a side dish. You can use browned ground beef or pork (sausage is great, too) in your tomato-based sauce, and chicken, fish (light or dark) and other kinds of seafood (clams, oysters, etc.) can be added to creamy and cheesy dishes, as well as to the no-sauce type. Experimentation will tell you what goes together and what doesn’t, but creativity rules the kitchen when it comes to easy pasta dishes.
