Cooking 101: Pasta

I've doing a lot of cooking the last couple weeks - or at least 'a lot' of cooking compared to what I used to do, which was almost none. Now that I'm not on my feet working for eight plus hours a day I have more time and energy to actually put together a meal. Although, in the course of writing this I've realized that so far I've been making pasta almost exclusively. That was unintentional. I always love pasta dishes, but more practically pasta is just quick and easy to cook. Not to mention, you can just throw everything into a bowl and serve it. Anyway, I've decided to focus just on the pasta dishes for this post.

I gathered these recipes from a myriad of sources: off the internet, out of a book, from a magazine. I have found there are all kinds of free recipe sites online and I think that is the easiest place to get recipes from since it's so easy to find what you're looking for.

This dish had a very interesting taste to it because the main ingredients for the sauce are tomatos and limes. I really liked this one although it is a little spicy. But it has a pretty good, multi-level flavor to it. Even though there are only two limes in the quantity I made the limes are much stronger then anything else. I think next time I make it though I might try adding more tomatos. You can find this recipe here.

The easiest pasta recipe I've made is this plain fettuccine alfredo recipe. (That links to a similar though different recipe than I used.) I'm not always a huge fan of creamy fettuccine alfredo dishes because they are often very heavy. This version isn't quite as heavy and it is very simple with only three ingredients. It's great for a busy night. 

I also really like pasta salads. They are great because you can make a large batch and put the leftovers in the fridge for later. I made this pasta salad the weekend Hurricane Irene hit as it was something simple that it I could have eaten if the power went out (which luckily didn't happen). I omitted the feta cheese and added a Tuscan spice blend I bought at a specialty store. I like to make this recipe because I can take a little bit with me to school each day for lunch.

And finally this recipe for "Chicken Caprese" which I found in a magazine and made earlier today. The chicken has tomatoes and mozzarella cheese rolled up inside it. I secured the two ends together with a toothpick. I paired it with some aglio e olio. I love aglio e olio because it has a simple taste and can go with almost anything. I followed a recipe in one of my cookbooks but there are multiple versions of this online such as this one.

One thing I've been doing that makes it really easy to have a good cooked meal even on a busy night, is to prepare the full recipe and keep leftovers for later. With the chicken caprese recipe it made three servings although I only ate one serving because it's just me. Afterwards, I put each of the other pieces of chicken into separate tupperware containers. Then, I divvied up the rest of the pasta in between the two containers. That way, for the next two nights I can just throw one of the containers in the microwave. I like to think of it as my own homemade microwave dinners.

I plan to write a post later about some of the other (non-pasta) recipes I've been preparing. First, though, I'll have to work on making a wider variety of dishes.