College Food - A simple staple

When I was in college, I always seemed to have simple things in the cupboard. Since there are members of our family going back to college (Isabelle and Michelle) and neighbors (Savannah and Lauren), I thought I would write an article about a simple dish that I still make today. I usually make this dish when I am in a time crunch, there isn’t much in the refrigerator or we haven’t made a trip to the grocery store for one reason or another. I always seemed to have pasta, butter/olive oil, pepper/red pepper flakes and parmesan in my cabinet at school. So here is one of my favorite dishes that I still have occasionally today.

Ingredients

2 cup of favorite pasta (that would be penne for me). Today we are using bowtie pasta

2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of pepper or red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons parmesan cheese (minimum)

2 pinches of salt

1 teaspoon of olive oil

Preparation

In a pot add water, salt and olive oil over medium heat.

Pot with water, salt (to make it boil faster) and olive oil

Adding the pasta to the boiling water

Adding the pasta into the boiling water

Boil the pasta until al dente. What is al dente? It means (“to the tooth“) - when you bite into it, you feel a little resistance and it doesn’t fall apart into mush. From a color standpoint, the pasta color will be a hue about half between hard pasta and mushy pasta we have all had at some point in our lives.

Al dente pasta, notice the pasta center color still has some of the original color while the edges are more white in hue. This typically is the color all pasta has when it is al dente in texture. This is just a visual queue to test and make sure that it is the right texture.

Pasta cooked to al dente texture.

Once the pasta is al dente, then drain the pasta into a strainer.

Pouring the cooked al dente pasta into the strainer

Turn the heat off on the stove, put the boiling pot back on the stove and add the butter or olive oil

Adding butter to the pot

Pour the drained pasta back into the pot you boiled it in.

Add the al dente pasta back into pot with melted butter

Stir the pasta to coat it with butter or olive oil.

Coating the pasta with butter

Add parmesan to butter and pasta mixture

Adding cheese to the pot

Add pepper/red pepper, then stir to combine

What I love about this dish is that you leave it plain or add any protein like chicken, shrimp, beef or vegetables (asparagus, yellow squash and zucchini are good choices) as well as being done in under 15 minutes.

Bon Appetit!