Once in a while, you find yourself at home without a lot of groceries on hand and you need to make a quick dinner. You haven't thought much about it in advance so you need to come up with something using what you have in the house and you want it to be relatively quick to prepare.
Using tomato paste is not only convenient but gives the sauce a deep, rich flavor |
That was me last Sunday night. It was a busy weekend, mostly because my husband and I were tackling a little home project of painting one of our rooms in preparation for new carpet installation.
Even when it's busy, I still like to cook for my family on the weekends as much as I can. In recent years, our cravings for take out and eating out has dwindled so much and weekends are when I get the chance to make hot meals we can all dig into together at the same time. So last Sunday, I started thinking about dinner and remembered a pasta recipe I'd pulled out from a magazine recently.
Here's what I like about this pasta dish...you use tomato paste as the basis for the sauce. So no tomatoes, no problem! When I buy a new container of tomato paste, I like to portion out the extra in tablespoon mounds and freeze them. This way, I can grab what I need from the freezer when a recipe calls for it. I often use tomato paste - loosened with a bit of hot water and seasoned with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and dry oregano - to make a tomato "sauce" base for pizza at home.
This dinner comes together in under 30 minutes. Olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, tomato paste, and some red pepper flakes get cooked down with some pasta water. Finish cooking the pasta - thin spaghetti in this case - in the liquid and stir in some peas (always in my freezer) and a handful of fresh basil (which I snip from my little herb box). If you like and have time, add a little protein like I did with shrimp. I also grabbed that from the freezer and simply cooked it up in the same pan before starting the sauce.
The pasta turned out flavorful and hearty. I served it with garlic bread, which I'd made a few days earlier and tucked away in the freezer (maybe I was subconsciously planning this meal, but my son loves garlic bread). That went in the oven while I made the pasta and we had a fortifying dinner!
Even when it's busy, I still like to cook for my family on the weekends as much as I can. In recent years, our cravings for take out and eating out has dwindled so much and weekends are when I get the chance to make hot meals we can all dig into together at the same time. So last Sunday, I started thinking about dinner and remembered a pasta recipe I'd pulled out from a magazine recently.
Here's what I like about this pasta dish...you use tomato paste as the basis for the sauce. So no tomatoes, no problem! When I buy a new container of tomato paste, I like to portion out the extra in tablespoon mounds and freeze them. This way, I can grab what I need from the freezer when a recipe calls for it. I often use tomato paste - loosened with a bit of hot water and seasoned with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and dry oregano - to make a tomato "sauce" base for pizza at home.
This dinner comes together in under 30 minutes. Olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, tomato paste, and some red pepper flakes get cooked down with some pasta water. Finish cooking the pasta - thin spaghetti in this case - in the liquid and stir in some peas (always in my freezer) and a handful of fresh basil (which I snip from my little herb box). If you like and have time, add a little protein like I did with shrimp. I also grabbed that from the freezer and simply cooked it up in the same pan before starting the sauce.
The pasta turned out flavorful and hearty. I served it with garlic bread, which I'd made a few days earlier and tucked away in the freezer (maybe I was subconsciously planning this meal, but my son loves garlic bread). That went in the oven while I made the pasta and we had a fortifying dinner!