Pasta: The Ultimate in Versatility

Pasta has to be one of the easiest ingredients to base a new recipe on. It's quite filling, but has a neutral flavor, which makes it great with almost anything. There's a basic formula that I use for creating a new pasta dish. This formula makes it really easy to use up leftovers or just to clear out some stuff from your cupboard or refrigerator.

The are 5 categories of foods that go into this formula: pasta, sauce, vegetables, meat, and cheese. I'll discuss each of these individually.

Pasta
Choose a pasta that fits well with the other ingredients you want to use. For the most part, it really doesn't matter, but traditionally you should use a bigger pasta when you have a chunky sauce and lots of big pieces of vegetables or meat. Smaller pastas go well with simple sauces and smaller or non-existent vegetables and meat. I'm not a big fan of restrictions like that, so I do not always follow it. Also, you can use rice instead of pasta in almost any pasta dish.

Sauce
There's much more to this category than plain old spaghetti sauce, although there are an amazing number of options there. You could make a sauce out of chopped tomatoes, garlic and basil, sauteed in olive oil. There are also other possibilities with alfredo, white sauce (which I will blog about further later), salsa, barbecue sauce, and anything else you can think of. A sauce doesn't have to be complex in flavor, either. It could be as simple as butter or olive oil.

Vegetables
This is where you have a chance to add more complexity to the dish, as well as a bit more nutrition. The vegetable can be as unobtrusive as spinach blended into the sauce or it can be a major component, like big pieces of broccoli placed over the top. There isn't a vegetable in existence that can't be worked tastefully into a pasta dish, but make sure it works well with the sauce. I tend to choose the vegetable and meat first, then I work the rest of the dish around those.

Meat
The meat can be anything as well. This is really a great way to use up leftover turkey, ham, chicken. You could even use sliced steak or ground beef. I've also found that if the sauce is strong enough, I can even get away with canned meats.

Cheese
When people think of cheese for pasta, they generally think of parmesan and, maybe, mozzarella. These really are the best, if you're using a tomato-based sauce, but you really don't have to be limited to these. For example, macaroni with barbecue sauce and hamburger would go great with American cheese, for an excellent cheeseburger macaroni.

Pulling it all together
The most important thing to remember about this formula is that any element can be left out. That includes the pasta. Choose the ingredients you want to use, then it's time to decide how to serve it. You could just mix it all together in a pot and serve it like Hamburger Helper. You can also layer it or mix it in a baking dish and bake it. My favorite way to serve things like this is to make it a little more like a restaurant. I place the pasta in the middle of the plate, pour sauce over it and top it with veggies and/or meat. This doesn't work for everything so just think about what would work best with the ingredients you're using.

Here's my family's favorite pasta. It was created to find a way of making pasta without the expense of buying or making pasta sauce. My family loves simplicity which explains why they love this stuff. They call it Mommy's Special Pasta. My oldest son actually requested this for his birthday dinner more than once.



Ingredients
1 lb. angel hair pasta or vermicelli
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil (I've never measured it, but this should be close)
basil
garlic salt
Parmesan cheese

Boil the pasta according to package directions. Drain it and transfer to a serving bowl. Drizzle the olive oil over the top. Toss until the pasta is coated with oil and doesn't stick. Sprinkle with basil and garlic salt. Toss this until the basil is evenly distributed. If you add the parmesan while the pasta is still really hot, it will melt. This is the way I used to make it. Now I serve the parmesan at the table so I can leave it out for myself.

If you decide to try to make this lower in fat, you can use chicken broth instead of olive oil. But you need to serve it right away. The chicken broth will absorb into the pasta, and leftovers will be sticky and mushy.

Pasta is a most amazing food. It's the ultimate in versatility. If you had 5 ingredients that you used for each of the elements in this formula, you could come up with 125 different dishes. Even if half of them weren't that great, you'd have over 60 different fabulous meals. It's a great way to enjoy the creative process and enjoy your.