I am in love with angel hair.
It is my favorite of the long noodles. It’s small size and extreme surface area, each strand soaking up the scrumptious sauces, oozing deliciously of garlic or cream, the richness packed into such a thin shape, as it twirls about your fork and slides over your tongue, the texture flirty and exquisite, with so many little tendrils…mmm, I adore angel hair.
Which is why it should come as no surprise that most of the pounds of dried pastas we have left in our food-annex-come-closet are in the form of angel hair (and lasagna, as there was a good sale this year and I stocked up). Thus when Mark decides what he would like to eat today is pasta, more often than not of late it’s been angel hair that I serve.
So I grabbed a few things from the fridge and closet [we are attempting to go through our stock piled food, and then there shall be less to have to move when we finally come to it] and tossed together this really yummy comfort food lunch.
Roasted Garlic Vegetables Over Angel Hair
Ingredients:
3 bulbs garlic, defrocked and sliced in half
1 can of black olives, roughly chopped
1/3 c sun dried tomatoes, slightly less roughly chopped
2 zucchini, thin sliced longways
1 scoop [roughly 1/2 c] spicy red sauce
1/2 lb angel hair pasta
cup of olive oil or grapeseed oil
Take the garlic, olives, tomatoes, and zucchini and toss 3/4 c of oil on them, put them in the oven at 450 degrees F. If your red sauce has just been made, cover it to keep the heat in, if not take it out of the fridge to let it come to room temperature. In about 15 minutes, begin to boil a pot of water for the pasta. Wander off so as to not be staring at the water despondently.
Once the water has reached a roiling boil, add the remainder of the olive oil, toss in your pasta, and do not leave its side! Angel hair literally takes about 90 seconds of boiling to cook to al dente. Count. Have the colander ready in the sink, and drain the pasta, tossing it back into the pot after.
Grab the oil and roasted veggies from the oven, and pour them into the pasta, along with the red sauce.
Mix as well as you can [angel hair tends to like its own company, pushing the vegetables out to the sides--that's fine, do the best you can to get them to mingle, but in the end you will just have to (when plating) attempt to dole the veggies out evenly] and serve.
For dinner I shall cook the rest of the pasta and just serve it with a simple red sauce:
Open 2 tomato sauce cans, pour into saucepan, add about 1/2-3/4 of a can of water (pour it first from can to can, cleaning out all the sauce).
Add a whole lot (to taste) of granulated garlic, onions, basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, and if you have a taste for the spice, hot pepper flakes and multi grain pepper.
Simmer for 20 mins, taste it, declare it needs more basil and oregano, add more, simmer for 10 mins more and voila! delicious red sauce.
Mmmmm, angelhair.
Tags: comfort food, easy, italian, pasta, quick, roasted garlic, zucchini