One pot linguine with tomato, shallots, and basil

I’m usually not a recipe person. I don’t often see a specific recipe and say I need to try that. I’m more a technique guy. When I read through food magazines its usually for ideas and not specific recipes, knowhatimean? It’s crazy because I remember my mother listening to Arthur Schwartz on the radio every Friday afternoon, and I hated it, mainly because I never understood why she would be listening if most of the stuff they’re talking about doesn’t apply to us anyway! Now I understand, it’s about taking away ideas. Where am I going with this you ask? Well recently I saw this recipe for pasta…pretty boring I know, except the technique was pretty cool and different. Just dump your pasta, vegetables and water in a pot and let it cook away. I was intrigued, and surprised when it actually worked.

So, you know how usually I go on and on about random boring science-y stuff? Well not today. No, today I bring you just a pretty neat way to cook a really quick dinner.

Being the 9 days, I feel like we’re all scrambling to try and find ways to somehow manage without meat. I for one, don’t think it’s such a big deal, I enjoy eating dairy, but for those scrambling, this is a really easy recipe, that can be put together in literally 10 minutes.

So anyway, I saw this in Living magazine, and was really intrigued. I’m not sure how much more random banter I can spew so I can pretend this will be longer than it actually is, because really all you have to do is throw some linguine in a pan, with some water, and some other vegetables, bring it to a boil, and let it cook until it’s done. I know that sounds hard, but it’s not. I guess the only difficult part is knowing how much water to put in per amount of pasta. The recipe pretty much calls for 1 and 1/4 cups of water for every 3 ounces of pasta, which worked great. But I’ve made it since then, and didn’t use exact measurements, and it also worked out great.

One thing to note, as the pasta cooks, it will look like there’s too much water; Don’t worry, keep going. As the water cooks, the starches from the pasta will also thicken the water, and in the end it will all work out.

For this recipe, I used shallots, tomatoes, garlic, and some frozen basil. But I’ve also used mushrooms, tomatoes, and basil…really any quick cooking vegetable will work.

After it was done a generous helping of freshly grated parmesan never hurt anyone.

So bottom line – I know it’s tough trying to mourn the destruction of the Bais Hamikdosh by trying to come up with dairy meals for like 1 whole week! I know…but maybe this can help.

Adapted from this recipe

Note: I scaled the recipe down to serve just one person, but I’ll include recipe to feed 4 from the Living website. But feel free to scale up and down as needed

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces Linguine (or any pasta for that matter…I think your best bet is a long thing type, like spaghetti, fettucini, etc..)
• 12 ounces cherry/grape tomatoes, halved  (I used regular plum tomatoes)
• 1-2 medium shallots , thinly sliced (original recipe calls for regular onions, but I like the taste of shallots a little better in quick cooking applications, but as always feel free to do whatever the heck you want!)
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
• 2 sprigs basil, plus torn leaves for garnish (I didn’t have fresh basil, so I used frozen…don’t tell anyone)
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
• 2 tsp Salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 4 1/2 cups water
• Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (Please don’t use the pre-grated crap)

Directions:

1. Place pasta, tomatoes, shallots, garlic, red pepper flakes, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, and water into a skillet (If the noodles don’t fit, then just break them until they do) over high heat until it boils, and continue to cook for about another 9 minutes, until the water has nearly evaporated.
2. Garnish with freshly grated parmesan