Pantry pasta
The fridge was sparse
The pantry I grew up with was full of Campbell’s soup, Chef Boyardee and homemade pickles and jams. When I moved to Vancouver and went to a small Italian grocer for the first time my mind was blown. So many amazing and delicious looking things in those middle aisles - olives, sun dried tomatoes, beans, preserves, figs, vinegars, olive oil, etc. Over the years I’ve slowly figured out how to cook with these ingredients. I keep my pantry stocked with a handful of these ‘never-go-bad’ flavour bombs. That’s what was in tonight’s pasta.
Tonight’s takes:
Husband: “Don’t add too much olive oil.” “Are you going to add more cheese?” “It’s good.”
Helen (5 1/2 years old): “This tastes weird. Not good weird, like bad weird. Are there artichokes in here? I don’t like artichokes.”
Hector (3 years old): “BEST PASTA EVER.”
What I used:
1 500g bag casarecce pasta
12 slices salami - it’s what I had left in the fridge
2 garlic cloves
Kalamata olives
Sundried tomatoes
Marinated artichoke hearts
1 398ml can cannellini beans
Parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Salt
I served this with roasted broccoli.
What I did:
Turned over onto 425°F - for broccoli
Put water on to boil. Added a big teaspoon of salt to it.
Put Dutch oven on the burner beside pasta pot with lots of olive oil in it. Turned heat to low.
Sliced salami and garlic.
Once water was boiling, added pasta. Set timer for 2 minutes less than al dente instructions (9 minutes)
Added salami and garlic to Dutch oven. Turned burner up to medium. Slowly fried.
Prepped my pantry items.
Washed and broke broccoli crowns up.
Put broccoli on sheet pan. Drizzled a healthy amount of olive oil and salt over it.
Threw in the oven.
When timer went off, added pasta to Dutch oven with salami and garlic. Added about 1 cup worth of pasta water along with it.
Stirred pasta to start emulsifying the sauce.
Added pantry items - beans, olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes. Added the whole can of beans (liquid and all) and a few good spoonfuls of the other three. The artichoke hearts were a bit big, so I used my kitchen scissors to cut them up (they were already in the pasta)
Stirred pasta pretty aggressively for another minute or so. Made sure to keep sauce simmering while stirring.
Tasted a noodle to make sure it was al dente.
Turned heat off. Added Parmesan cheese. I grated about 3/4 cups worth.
Stirred until creamy.
Done!
Pulled broccoli out.
Served!
Next time:
It was good just like this. But it will likely be different next time because it will depend on what’s in my pantry! PK did add chili flakes to his - maybe I’d throw some of those in with the garlic in the beginning.
😋😋😋
-Ellisa