A very simple pasta supper.
I normally make this with Campari tomatoes.
They're a little bit larger than this.
These are large cherry tomatoes.
So, we're taking these guys, about a quart of them.
Or a couple of pints if you're at the grocery store.
Buy a couple packages.
I have in this pan
a combination of olive oil and a little bit of butter,
or you can use all olive oil if you don't do butter.
And how do we get tomatoes or any product
that we put in a pan to give off its juice?
We salt it.
So, I'm gonna sprinkle in a little salt
and we want these to slump.
So, I stole a lid from a different pan,
and we're going to slump these guys with a little salt,
but we wanna throw in some fresh basil.
I have one hand of basil
and my grandpa always tore the basil
when he added it to tomato sauce.
We're gonna grate in a little garlic.
Now, a little garlic for us,
may be a little bit more than a little garlic for you.
You can add one clove, two cloves.
We add three cloves at our house
because we're kind of garlicky Italians.
You know what I mean?
This is fresh spinach.
Four packed cups come out to a handful.
Four packed cups of spinach.
So, in this bowl I have one and a half cups
of fresh ricotta cheese.
Then I add one quarter cup,
which I have over here, of mascarpone.
What we're gonna do first is just combine the spinach
with the cheeses.
Then we add, look at this, one full packed cup,
look at that, of dill, chive, parsley, and thyme.
All you do is mill the fresh herbs.
And we put the product, in this case the herbs,
into the bowl.
Then all you have to do is add a little salt to that.
We salt and pepper every layer a little bit.
You can use black or red pepper here.
And then I add a little bit of parm
and work that in liberally.
Salt, pasta cooking water.
Whatever the box says, it says seven minutes, nine minutes,
10 minutes, whatever it says,
cook it a minute less, one minute less,
always, always, always.
Why is that?
Because it's carry over cooking.
Carry overcooking means this is going to continue to cook
after it leaves the pot
because you always add pasta to the hot sauce.
Okay, guys, I'm adding in the last
of our starchy cooking water.
I've been working it in and look what we did here.
We took the mascarpone,
all of our fresh herbs, and the spinach,
and you see what happened?
Just by adding about three quarters of a cup
of the hot water, we've turned this into sauce.
This is now a loose cream sauce
with herb and garlic for our pasta.
So, now we're going to take our shortcut pasta of any kind.
I used this, it's kind of like a shortcut Mafalda.
It's like little baby lasagna,
but you can use rotini, farfalle, penne,
anything you'd like.
But I like something with curls or edges, agile,
which is lily-shaped pasta.
I like something to catch the sauce itself
because this sauce is so delicious
and we spill that into our bowl.
And then you make a well, bit of a well,
and then we're going to add fresh tomatoes
and basil sauce right down over the top.
I mean, check that out.
What?