quick and tasty dinner

Long day? Hungry? Solo? If you’re female, cute, funny, single, and live in the Ottawa area, I’ll make you dinner! I crack myself up.

slashfood has a great and simple idea for a quick summer meal. It’s essentially a greek salad with the lettuce and dressing replaced with pasta, some olive oil, and seasonings. They call it Greek Pasta, and I’m not going to argue with them. Here’s the recipe.

My recommendations:

  • Chop everything while the pasta’s cooking, because once you start sautéeing, it’s 5min (tops) to plating
  • Cook the pasta al dente… like, almost chewy.
  • Use a really good olive oil – makes a huge difference
  • Be liberal with the oregano and garlic. Sautéeing the garlic will make it sweet and takes the edge off, and the oregano will be a wallflower if you don’t have a healthy “pinch”
  • two olives (four halves) is plenty

Tasty, healthy, yummy stuff in about 10 minutes from throwing the pasta in the water to eating all alone again. I would have included a pic, but forgot to take one. I was hungry, and that’s my excuse.

10 thoughts on “quick and tasty dinner

  1. What I’d love to do is a community kitchen. It’s like a dinner club, but the main difference is everyone prepares and learns all at the same time.

    You rent out a place with appropriate prep facilities (like a curling club, legion, whatever) on a monthly basis, and the idea is you cook a bunch of different meals for the week following to take home, while socializing and (ideally, for me) having a dinner together to top everything off.

    People submit recipes and if there are techniques to making the dish that people know, they teach! It’s part social, part educational, and part nutritional. There’s a couple groups in the US that have done this, and I think it’s a cool idea.

    That said, they’re really tough to sustain in places like Ottawa because of the demographics. Be fun to try, tho.

  2. Excellent. I just started re-learning my pasta basics last-week. (Imagine, 4 days of tweaking a butter-Parmesan sauce). I think you just found my dinner recipe tonight.

  3. Make that lunch ;). Comments:

    * A splash of balsamic finishes it quite nicely.

    * Jury’s out on the cukes. A bit weird. (as are the olives. I’m wondering if adding them at the start might be better, to blend some salty into the flavour.

  4. a favorite of mine i do is kinda along those lines:

    cook the pasta

    in (good) olive oil saute’ basil leaves and seeded and large chopped plum tomatoes,

    add an anchovy (or two), saute’ till the anchovy disappeares,

    add capers, (good) olives, and the pasta,

    give it a quick toss and serve.

    the anchovy gives it a nice salty flavour (not fishy at all) and the whole dish tastes “fresh”.

    no canned olives!

    another super easy one cheryl makes, kinda liek this one as well:

    cook the pasta,

    in olive oil saute’ basil leaves and chopped tomatoes,

    optional: add oil preserved red pepper strips

    add the pasta, crumble fresh (good) feta on the whole thing, mix it a few times then serve.

    i have to say i’m a huge fan of those minimalist pasta dishes they taste so much more “oomph”y that the 2 day stewed tomato sauce ones…

  5. kj: I admit, I used the cukes for presentation more than anything else, lining the sides of the bowl so they formed a nice border. They looked great, but I ate them last and without the heavy oil and vinegar dressing you get in a typical Greek dressing they do add more texture than taste. I’m thinking I’ll work with the blasalmic a little more, and may try a different type of olives because I did find they were overpowering with their saltiness.

    prii: I’ll give the anchovies a go and see how they work out. I’ll pass on the capers, as the taste they impart with anything rarely impresses (I’ve never understood the capers with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and red onion – everything’s better without the capers)

    another pasta dish I’ve used in the past is farfalle with a butter sauce mixed with lightly sautéed red and green peppers with chorizo and cajun seasoned, blackened shrimp. also surprisingly tasty.

  6. im not a huge fan of capers either… but when combined with the deep salty flavours of the olives and anchovies, the acidity of the capers along with the tomatoes really does a great job at balancing…imo..

    and i almost always use farfale for those “salad” style pasta dishes.. so much yummier and pretty looking!

  7. This sounds so easy, and delicious! What if I were to add meat to it, do you have any recommendations of what meat would be best? Thanks for sharing this recipe, I can not wait to give it a try!

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