Pasta primavera (puttanesca style!)

Have you ever seen that movie A Series of Unfortunate Events? In the movie at one point the kids have to make dinner for their evil uncle (played by Jim Carrey) and they make something they call "pasta puttanesca" which the oldest sister defines as a pasta dish that you make with whatever ingredients are available. Wikipedia, however, defines pasta alla puttanesca as "whore's pasta" and as it turns out it originally WAS a dish made from whatever was lying around but now there's a specific recipe for it, blah, blah, blah. Check out the link here. (And by the way I can't wait to answer the question, "Mom, what's for dinner?!" with the response, "WHORE'S PASTA!" ha ha!)

I bring all this up because sometimes I make a dish that in my head I call "pasta puttanesca" and define it as making a pasta dish with whatever I can find! Usually, though, my dish looks a lot more like pasta primavera because I make it with whatever vegetables I can find in my fridge and freezer.

Last night I made this dish for John and it turned out great!


First I salted and boiled the water for the pasta and got that going (did you know that adding salt to the water makes it boil faster? Something about it changes the molecular structure of the water. I got a B in chemistry in high school so that's the best explanation I can give you. It DOES work!). I used farfalle (bow tie) pasta. Penne or any other short pasta works great for this. While the pasta was going I heated a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan with a lid. Then I added two small diced onions, carrots, a bag of frozen broccoli, and frozen mushrooms and let this cook for a while over med-high heat. After the veggies had defrosted and the carrots had softened a bit I added fresh tomatoes, garlic salt, ground black pepper, and stirred. Let this cook until the tomatoes are warm.

At the very end I added some chicken breast I had in the fridge (left over from a Crock Pot experiment I'll tell you about one day) plus more olive oil. After this was all heated, the pasta was done! I drained the pasta, returned it to the pot, then added the veggies. A few dashes of parm and we were ready to go!


And then? We chowed down. YUM.