What Is Your Favorite Pasta Recipe?

In the summer it is always what I can grab from the garden which is either pesto or a light tomato sauce.

Tomato sauce is just heat olive oil, saute garlic, add diced tomatoes, basil, parsley, salt and pepper to taste. It works best over an angel hair but really I have caught my kids tossing it over anything they can find in the house.

Out I like scampi, alfredo, or carbonara.

In, this is the easiest and most popular pasta dish I make:

Creamy Pesto Pasta!

Here is how I make it :
1 container heavy whipping cream
1 tub of pesto
fresh garlic
halved cherry tomatoes
grilled chicken in bite sized pieces
1 whole container of Kraft Parm/Asiago/Romano mix
Bow Tie Pasta - my kids favorite!

I normally use left over grilled chicken, so it's super quick too! That just gets tossed in at the very end and mixed.

I just warm the heavy cream and add in the pesto, stir until it's mixed well, then toss in the whole thing of Parm Cheese - you can use whatever kind you like, we just prefer the mix above.

While that is all warming and the pasta is boiling, I sauté some fresh garlic and cherry tomatoes together. When they are done, the are added to the pesto cream sauce.

Then mix the pasta, sauce, and chicken together. I serve it with a salad and garlic bread. It literally takes less than 20 minutes start to finish (with pre-done chicken) and it's SO good!! It's my copy cat of a dish I had at iRicchi last summer - a fancy Italian spot in DC.

Brown smoked sausage with onions and bell peppers while your favorite noodles boil.
When sausage is browned, and onions and peppers are soft and starting to carmelize, drain pasta and toss together with sausage. Do NOT drain sausage drippings - let the pasta soak them up.

Last night we did linguini two ways. My son had his with olive oil, parsley and capers and Parmesan. Husband and I had ours with prawns, which I cooked up with some shallots (you can use garlic), some tomato and parsley with white wine toward the end.I tossed the pasta in this and we shaved some Parmesan over all of it-- very good!

This is the favorite in our house and soooo easy!

Barefoot Contessa's Spaghetti Aglio E Olio

Spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and Parmesan cheese. Yum!

Here's the link:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/spaghetti-a...

Best
T. Y

i fix pasta when i'm in a hurry and don't want complications. sometimes that just means jarred sauce, but honestly my favorite is to saute a little garlic, onion and broccoli in olive oil and plop it on top of the hot pasta.
mmmmmm.
khairete
S.

I married into an Italian family, so pasta is a staple in my home.. My favorite is whole wheat linguine with marinara sauce, fresh tomatoes/ onion / garlic and some red wine mixed into sauce. I add sausage or ground turkey and it's amazing!

My hubby and son prefer Alfredo in theirs. Lots of cream, butter, and garlic! Tons of Parmesean.

Pasta primevera is easy to make and healthy. I just grab whatever vegetables I've got, add fresh garlic, tomatoes, and oregano/ basil and toss with some angel hair pasta. It's really good!

I have a home made marinara that I keep on hand. I usually have at least 1 quart in the fridge and 1 or more quarts in the freezer ready to go.

I serve a side of pasta/marinara with our meals often. I don't add meat to my sauce. Like I said it's made from scratch and often requested around here.

I have an Alfredo sauce that I've used a few times but our favorite is the marinara.

http://www.apronstringsblog.com/one-pot-wonder-tomato-bas...

This is wonderfully easy, and very tasty!

I actually bring the broth to a boil and put everything in, rather than putting it in the cold broth and bringing it to a boil... (that seems to make the pasta more sticky and tough if you put the cold broth over everything.)

I also add 2 cups of chopped, cooked chicken to make it more of a meal in itself.... very yummy! We also like mushrooms, so I add a small can of sliced mushrooms, too.

We do clams and linguine-shallots, garlic, white wine....my son loves a red pepper cream sauce. For 1 lb pasta, 2 red pepper and 2 cup cream. Cut up pepper, simmer in cream until cut in half-about 20 minutes. Blend and add: 3/5 salt, 1/8 t white pepper, pinch cayenne, 1 T smoked paprika, 1 T lemon.
I usually serve chicken in the side.

I also make a vodka cream suave all the time.

With summer, I'll also do a raw sauce: yellow tomatoes, basil, ricotta, salt and pepper and a little olive oil.

alfredo or carbonara, google or pinterest for specifics.

These are two of my favorites for when I need something quick:

http://www.marthastewart.com/891236/emerils-rigatoni-broc...

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/06/pasta-with-pes...

This one take a little bit longer, still only around 30 minutes, and is well worth it. I use zucchini instead of asparagus sometimes and both was are great:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/fettucine-wi...

My favorite is to make cioppino with angel hair pasta and to serve it with sourdough bread. You can google seafood cioppino recipes. My husband's favorite is making a cream sauce and I put in some kind of green veggies (like asparagus or green beans) and smoked salmon. For this one I use linguine and serve it with a big salad. My kids are boring...they like regular marinara sauce best. If you want to doctor up your marinara sauce, saute some onion, carrots and celery till soft. Then blend it and put it in the marinara. Then cook it for a while with some browned meatballs and italian sausage soaking in the sauce. Add a spash of red wine. YUM. So much yummier than regular marinara! The kids also like it when I made stuffed shells. I just follow the recipe on the box of large shells.

My 2 favorites:

The first is only really good when you can find Meyer lemons in season. They're sort of like a cross between a tangerine and a lemon - a little larger, usually, than a typical lemon, and not as tart.

Get a large serving bowl. Zest one Meyer lemon into the bowl, and then squeeze the juice of that lemon and one additional Meyer lemon. Add about 2 tablespoons of good olive oil, and a quarter cup of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Then cook one pound of pasta (we prefer a flat linguine or ridged penne with this, but really any will do). Save about 3/4 of a cup of the pasta cooking water before draining the pasta, and then drain it and immediately drop it into the serving bowl with the lemon juice, oil and cheese. Toss well and serve right away. It's excellent with some fresh basil torn or thinly sliced over the top, and a little good quality salt.

The second is: cherry tomatoes (raw, simply rinsed), fresh mozzarella (the real kind, in the brine) and fresh basil leaves. If the tomatoes are small, leave them whole; if they're larger, cut them in half. Tear or cut the mozzarella to about the same size as the tomatoes (about the size of dice in a board game). Tear the basil leaves. Combine all those in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil. You want the mixture to glisten with the oil, you don't want the oil to puddle in the bottom of the bowl - so use the oil sparingly. I usually let that sit at room temp for about an hour so all the flavors combine nicely. No measuring is needed - just a container of cherry or grape tomatoes, about half that amount of mozzarella cheese, and a big bunch of basil leaves. Then cook a pound of pasta. A nice small shape works well, like small shells, or bow-tie, or small penne. Drain it and combine it with the tomatoes/cheese/basil mixture. The hot pasta will melt the cheese just a little. You can then serve this at room temp, or chill it briefly in the fridge before serving. Also, sliced pitted Kalamata olives are a good addition to this, but not necessary. (not the canned black olives that are artificially ripened, but the real Greek Kalamata ones that are usually in a jar, in brine).

Mostly we make a simple red sauce. Sometimes meat sauce.
We also like Alfredo with penne, chicken & spinach.

I haven't made it in a long time but I like manicotti shells stuffed with a mix of shredded mozzarella and onion & chive cream cheese. Then you cover it in sauce, bake it, and cover in parmesan.

LAsagna with cottage cheese and spinach, lasagna roll ups with ricotta, pasta salad with bow ties, red pepper, red onion, feta and Italian dressing, macaroni with fresh stewed tomatoes and parmesan, linguini alfredo with shrimp, spaghetti with vodka sauce and bacon bits and spaghetti with meat sauce are out usuals.

One of our favorites is this:

Saute 2 cloves of chopped garlic in some EVOO
Add one sliced onion
Add 3 sliced zucchini
when soft, add a can of diced tomatoes
Salt, pepper, oregano and basil to taste

Put over pasta

So easy (takes like 10 mins) and very healthy. You can use real tomatoes, too if you want. Especially if they are very soft.

Pink Spaghetti:

http://faithfulcooking.blogspot.com/2014/02/pink-spaghett...

We like chicken (or shrimp) and pasta in Alfredo sauce.
You could use fettuccine but we like using bow tie pasta or shells.

We often buy ravioli. My kids like the 3 cheese and either eat it plain or with spaghetti/marinara sauce on it. I like to buy different kinds for me. Some of my favorites are portobello mushroom or butternut squash. I add steamed veggies and then use a pesto sauce. I like the sun-dried tomato pesto that is made by Classico.

We usually add meatballs to our spaghetti. I'm too lazy to make meatballs so we buy frozen ones. Sometimes we use fun shaped or fun colored pastas instead of spaghetti.

A friend of mine was just telling me that they sometimes do pasta bars. (Sounds like a lot of work to me, but maybe once in awhile.) She will make a couple of different pastas, a couple of different sauces, meatballs or grilled chicken, steamed veggies, Parmesan cheese, etc. and let her kids make their own pasta dish.