5 Ingredient Pasta Dinner

Super simple recipe but it illustrates a few things.

• The use of ready-made ingredients, like a commercial pesto, can elevate some simple things to delicious heights and save you a bunch of time.
• In a recipe as simple as this, you have room for improvisation. Instead of chicken, use shrimp or a firm fish that will hold together like mahi-mahi. Instead of artichoke hearts, use cubed summer squash, halved cherry tomatoes, or lightly cooked broccoli.
• Pasta water makes a good thickener for pasta sauces. It helps the sauce stick to the pasta better and stretches out a sauce without thinning it out.

And this whole recipe takes about as long as it takes to boil water and cook pasta.

5* Ingredient Pasta Dinner
(serves 4)

12 oz. chicken breasts
salt and pepper
1 Tablespoon oil
¼ cup white wine (or use broth or water)
8 oz. frozen artichoke heart quarters, thawed
1 pound short pasta such as penne or cavatelli
4 Tablespoons pesto (homemade or commercial)

Start heating up a pot of salted water. Cut the chicken breasts into bite sized pieces and season with salt and pepper. Set aside. Heat a skillet over high heat. Add the oil, then the chicken pieces and sauté. As soon as the water boils, add the pasta and set the timer for 1 minute less than the suggested cooking time (how long depends on the shape). Cook the chicken until browned. Add the wine and scrape up any browned bits and cook until all the liquid has evaporated. Add the artichoke hearts, cover, and turn down the heat to low. When the pasta timer goes off, check to see that it is very nearly done. Scoop off a ½ cup of cooking water, then drain the pasta. Add the pasta, reserved water, and pesto to the skillet. Stir to cover the pasta with the sauce. Check for salt; add more salt if needed. Serve as soon as it is all hot.

*And, yes, I can count. I'm not counting the salt, pepper, or oil because they are pantry items. If I wanted to really push it, I'd say 4 because there is always white wine in my house. :-)

More Bruschetta

Here's another great topping for bruschetta: pesto mushrooms. Very easy and simple. These are also wonderful tossed with pasta.

You can find instructions for making the toast part of bruschetta here.

Pesto Mushrooms
(serves 4; costs $7.00 if served with bruschetta made with ½ loaf of crusty bread)

1 pound mushrooms, cut into chunks
4 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons pesto
¼ teaspoon salt
pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add olive oil and mushrooms. The mushrooms will sizzle and will soon give off a bit of liquid. Keep cooking over high heat until the liquid evaporates and the mushrooms begin to brown. Remove from heat. Add pesto, salt, and crushed red pepper flakes. Stir to combine. Use to top bruschetta or mix with spaghetti.

Quick Marinara Sauce: Cheaper than the Jar

Is jarred spaghetti sauce a good deal? We think not. Good reasons for making your own:

• It's really easy
• It requires no skill and minimal equipment
• It's not pumped up with added sugar, a common problem with cheap jarred sauces
• It's cheaper - high quality sauces run $3.50 to $4.00 a jar. A can of crushed tomatoes costs as little as $1.49, which is most of the cost in homemade sauce
• It tastes much better

If you have a saucepan and a can-opener and you know how to stir, you can pull off a decent marinara sauce. You can customize it according to your taste: add different herbs, add cheese, add veggies, add meat. It's your sauce, so you can make it your own. The basic sauce uses only pantry staples.

We'll be posting other easy tomato pasta sauces in the future, versions that aren't quite so simple. But, really, this one isn't bad in a pinch.

Quick n' Easy Marinara Sauce
(makes about 3 1/2 cups; total cost $2.41)

2 tbl olive oil
28 oz can of crushed tomatoes or tomato puree
1 tsp onion powder
½ tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried basil, crushed in your palm
½ tsp dried oregano, crushed in your palm
1 large pinch black pepper
½ tsp salt

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Variations:

Tomato-Butter Sauce: replace olive oil with butter (adds 20¢ to cost)
Spicy Marinara Sauce: add 1 large pinch of crushed red pepper
Parmesan Marinara: add ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese before using (adds 20¢ to cost)
Chunky Marinara: add a 14-16 oz can diced tomatoes, increase other ingredients by half (adds $1.95 to cost)
Pesto Tomato Sauce: add 1-2 tbl prepared pesto (adds 30¢ - 60¢ to cost)

Quick Summer Pasta - Good All Year

Summer is winding down. Fall arrives on Friday but we can still enjoy the bounty of summer, even into the winter. This recipe uses pesto and cherry tomatoes, foods associated with summer. But, you can make this year round because cherry tomatoes are available in winter and decent pesto is sold in most supermarkets. Try to find the pesto sold in the refrigerated case because it is far superior to the pesto sold in shelf-stable jars.

Bowties with pesto
(serves 4)

1 lb. regular or multigrain bowtie pasta
8 oz. container pesto
1 pt. cherry tomatoes, cut in half
4 oz. crumbled feta cheese

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and while warm, add the pesto, tomatoes, and feta cheese and stir.

Variation: to bulk this up, cut 1 large cooked boneless chicken breast (about 8 oz) into bite-sized pieces and add it at the same time as the pesto. See our post on Curried Chicken Salad on how to quickly cook chicken breasts in the microwave.