COVID Cooking: Chickpea and Rosemary Soup with Pasta and Olive Oil

Note: During this time, I am trying to post more regularly in the hopes that in my small way, I can help people cope with a crisis.  As I usually do – through food.  I am trying to fulfill the requests for pantry-focused meals that are wholesome to the mind and the body.  Wishing everyone all the very best from NYC!

I’ve been thinking, cooped up in my apartment, what I can do to contribute during this time of change and isolation, in addition to staying home.  Like so many, I am working full time from home and parenting full time from home.  A lot of friends have expressed concern about not knowing what to cook or how to cook.  That’s one thing I can do (cook!), so I will post what I am making, in the hopes that it will help some of you to find feeding yourself or your family that much less stressful.  I am trying to make easy things that feel nourishing.  I know that availability is different in different parts of the country.  And I know that there are so many out there who cannot get access to food or are concerned about how they will pay for it.  I encourage everyone who can to think of those who are facing these even more enormous obstacles and to give locally to your food bank or to Feeding America, which is mounting a COVID-19 response.

This little soup/stew is so simple to throw together, and made from pantry staples.  Mr. English and I went to Sicily on our honeymoon and stayed at a gorgeous olive oil farm just by Agrigento.  It was October, so they were harvesting olives all around us.  At night, they had communal dinners in a cool, stone-walled farmhouse.  They served us this chickpea and shell pasta dish with rosemary from huge vats, and came around with seconds.  Another place.  Another time.  But I remember it for a moment when I eat this.  It is a generous dish that knows what you want – comfort, warmth, kindness – and gives it to you unreservedly.

Something to note: depending on how much liquid you add, this can be a soup or a stew.  The quantities below give you a soup.  Use 2-3 total cups of stock and water to get a stew.  And 1-2 cups to get a pasta dish – add some cold water at the end to make it extra voluptuous.

Chickpea and Rosemary Soup with Pasta and Olive Oil

serves 2-4

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for garnish

1 small onion, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1 clove of garlic, peeled and smashed

1 small sprig rosemary, leaves chopped

2 14-ounce cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 cups vegetable broth (or chicken broth, or water)

¼ pound small pasta, like small shells, elbows, ditalini, etc.

Parmesan cheese (optional), for garnish

METHOD

Heat the olive oil in a medium stock pot over medium heat.  Add the onion and carrots and garlic and season with salt and pepper.  Sauté 5 minutes, until the onion is translucent.  Add the rosemary and stir in the hot pot until fragrant – a few seconds.  Add the chickpeas and the stock, along with 2 cups of water.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and leave to bubble uncovered for 20-30 minutes, until everything is very tender.  Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package instructions.  I like to cook my pasta separately so I can store leftovers separately (if you store them together in the fridge, the pasta will suck up all the liquid in the soup).

To bring it all together, stir the pasta into the soup and top with a fresh glug of olive oil and some Parmesan cheese.

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Categories: 30 Minutes, Cheap, Easy, Eat, Main Courses, Recipes, Sides, Soup, Soup & Salad, Starches, Vegetarian, Vegetarian
 

Whole Cauliflower Cacio e Pepe

Last night my toddler asked me for more cauliflower.  I had to conceal my complete delight and shock and pretend, like, yeah, sure, seconds of cauliflower.  Totally normal.

When I have been feeling unvirtuous, I come back to this recipe.  It’s a whole head of cauliflower, showered with Pecorino cheese and cracked black pepper, roasted in the oven until the cauliflower melts like a stew and the cheese crisps and tans on the top.  The butter and olive oil mix with the water and cauliflower juices to make a kind of broth.  Sometimes you want the comfort of something cooked in a big Dutch oven, but just want the weight of it.  I serve this with a green salad with mustard vinaigrette.  If you don’t need to be virtuous, definitely cut up a baguette to dunk on the side.

Whole Cauliflower Cacio e Pepe

serves 2 plus a small person who asks for seconds

INGREDIENTS

1 “jumbo” cauliflower, washed

2 cups boiling water

1 cup (2.5 oz) grated Pecorino cheese

2 tablespoons unsalted butter (preferably organic and cultured), diced

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Salt

Pepper

METHOD

Move the rack to the bottom third of the oven.  Preheat to 450 degrees F.

Trim the bottom off the cauliflower so it has a flat base on which to sit.  Remove any big leaves (little pale green ones are fine).  Give the whole thing a wash and sit it in the bottom of a big Dutch oven.  Pour the hot water in the bottom of the pot.

Season the top of the cauliflower with salt.  Using your pepper grinder, grind 25 twists of black pepper on the coarsest setting over the top.  Pile the cheese on top of the cauliflower, the top with the butter, then drizzle with the olive oil.  If some of the flavorings fall into the water, that’s great – it becomes a delicious cauliflower broth.

Put the lid on the pot and bake for 45 minutes, until the cauliflower is very tender.  Serve with Mustardy Green Salad.

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Categories: 60 Minutes, Cheap, Easy, Eat, Main Courses, Recipes, Sides, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Vegetarian
 

September is Still Summer Green Tomato Bucatini

I have always thought of myself as a summer hater.  I hate the heat.  I hate the smell.  I hate the dirt.  That’s New York for you, anyway.  Maybe summer is nicer in other places.

But September!  What a stunner.  My favorite month.  The back-to-school possibility of it all.  The return to routine.  The cooler breeze.  The spotless skies.  It’s perfect.

And today, as I was at my usual Saturday morning farmers’ market a few blocks away, I realized even more why September is the best month: in the one way that summer IS great (the produce), September is still, technically after all, summer.  There’s corn.  There’s eggplant.  There are beans.  And there are still stoplight-colored heirloom tomatoes blushing from every stall, waiting for you to pinch their cheeks and take them home.

Today I grabbed a pound of ripe green heirloom tomatoes and a pound of bucatini and made a September Saturday summer lunch.  I used my beloved hand blender to blitz the tomatoes into, basically, green tomato water.  I didn’t even cut them first; it takes 15 seconds.  I boiled the bucatini – the pasta that looks like thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle for drinking up all that tomato sauce like a straw – until it was two minutes undercooked from the package directions.  After I drained it, I added olive oil back to the same pot (one pot wonder!), toasted a garlic clove, added in my green tomato water, and dumped in my VERY al dente bucatini, which did what it does and sucked up all that tomato sauce until the pasta was cooked and the pan was nearly dry.  You can leave it there, and why not because it’s delicious, but I tore in some fresh mint that I’m attempting to grow on my windowsill (it’s touch-and-go right now).  You could use basil.

I love this pasta for being at once familiar and unexpected.  Like the cool breeze wandering in from my balcony, it feels so fresh.  The tomato sauce is almost raw – just cooked enough to allow the pasta to cook within it.  The fresh spike of the herbs, also raw and fragrant as they tan on the hot pasta, feels like cool grass, and the olive oil I drizzled on at the end was also grassy.  It brings the outside in.  I loved its sophisticated simplicity, its ease.  And after an insane first week back in the office after Labor Day, I loved that it was done in one pot in 15 minutes for under $10 and adults and children alike were delighted.

Some thoughts.  The green tomato is not the unripe green tomato you’d use for fried green tomatoes.  It’s a fully ripe green tomato and the sauce won’t work with the other kind of green tomato.  That said, while the ripe green tomato is slightly tarter than its red and yellow cousins, this recipe will work with any color of ripe tomato.  It’s perfect as a main course but would so make a fantastic side to grilled shrimp or roasted chicken.  I hope it brings the same sense of smug September satisfaction to you as it did to me.  Bon app!

September is Still Summer Green Tomato Bucatini

serves 4

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 pound of bucatini pasta (I like De Cecco)
  • Salt
  • 1 pound of RIPE green tomatoes (as opposed to the unripe ones, which are used for fried green tomatoes; please also note that this sauce can be made with red or yellow or any color of tomatoes for that matter)
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus more for garnish
  • 1 small garlic clove, peeled
  • A handful of fresh basil or mint leaves, sliced or torn, whatever’s easier

METHOD

Bring a large pot of water to boil, salt it, and cook the pasta 2 minutes short of the pasta’s cooking instructions (De Cecco recommends 9-11 minutes, so I do 8 (2 less than the average)).  Drain.

Meanwhile, use a hand blender (less cleanup) or a regular blender to pulverize and puree your tomatoes completely.  Set aside.

Use the same pot that you used for the pasta and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Toast the whole clove until golden on both sides – 2-3 minutes total.  Add the pureed tomatoes and good pinch of salt.  Add the pasta back into the sauce and bring to a simmer over medium heat.  Cook, tossing occasionally, until the sauce is mostly absorbed into the pasta and the pasta is al dente.  (Because you are keeping the flame low here so that tomatoes keep their fresh flavor, this can take about 5 more minutes.)  Just before serving, toss in the mint or basil or both.

Serve in bowls.  Garnish, if you like, with a drizzle of olive oil and some torn fresh basil and/or mint leaves.

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Categories: 15 Minutes, Easy, Eat, Main Courses, Recipes, Sides, Starches, Vegetarian
 

Sweetest Cinnamon Sugar Croissant Buns

RECIPE: Sweetest Cinnamon Sugar Croissant Buns

Sweetest Cinnamon Sugar Croissant BunsLately, I’ve been noticing something. My fridge and freezer are packed. How are they this full for two people!? It’s because I buy ingredients, use some of them, and then keep the rest forever – buying new groceries each week, so that week upon week of ingredients pile up like some architectural site I need to excavate to find anything. It’s unacceptable on so many levels.

No more! I woke up last Sunday ready to take action – and to make something sweet and sticky and Sunday-ish, rather than running out to buy bagels. I had spotted a sheet of puff pastry in the freezer, leftover from a spinach and feta potpie I made months ago, and I knew I had sugar and cinnamon. So I went to work making an abridged version of these: a simple cinnamon sugar croissant roll that takes five minutes to make, 20 minutes to bake, and 10 seconds to eat.

I love the pared back honesty of these sugar-and-spice pinwheels. The pastry is flaky, crusty, and chewy – like a croissant. The inside is sweet but also warm and homey. The apartment smelled amazing. Mr. English was suitably impressed. We ate them warm from the oven with a bowl of clementines nestled in the covers.

And best of all, I used up the last of my puff pastry and sugar. Consider this this year’s spring cleaning for me. When you spring forward tomorrow morning, make yourself a batch to take the edge off. Bon app.

Sweetest Cinnamon Sugar Croissant Buns
makes 6 little buns
Sweetest Cinnamon Sugar Croissant BunsINGREDIENTS
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • Pinch of flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)
  • 1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed in the fridge overnight
METHOD Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Sprinkle a bit of this mixture on the counter to keep the pastry dough from sticking to the surface. Lay out the thawed but cold puff pastry sheet. Dump the rest of the sugar mixture on top, and spread it evenly over the surface. Use a rolling pin to press the sugar into the pastry (it won’t all get stuck; some will fall off, which is no big deal). Roll the pastry up like a jellyroll, with the cinnamon sugar inside. Cut into 6 buns, and play cut-side-up in a muffin tin. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, until puffed and golden and amazing smelling. Let cool for a couple of minutes in the tin, then scoop them out with a knife or offset spatula, and get eating.print this recipe
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Categories: 30 Minutes, Bakery, Bread & Butter, Breakfast & Brunch, Cheap, Desserts, Easy, Eat, Pastries, Pastry, Recipes, Sweets, Vegetarian
 

Easy and Lux Truffled Stovetop Mac and Cheese for New Year’s Eve

RECIPE: Easy and Lux Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Truffles and Mustard
Easy and Lux Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Truffles

This mac and cheese is super easy because it’s all done in one pot on the stove. It’s lux because – obviously – there are truffles!

New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. I love the start-over aspect. The fresh go. The grown-up’s back-to-school blank slate. I was laughing to myself this morning how after spending my teen years growing up in Florida, a decade ago I would have been found nowhere else other than some overpriced Miami club tonight. Now, I prefer to stay home. Make dinner. Make plans. There’s no looking back – only the hopeful anticipation of what’s to mene.

I rarely cook an Eve dinner without truffles. Their smell always precedes the oohs and ahhs of “truffles!” – they feel festive and luxurious and, of course, auspicious. More often than not I do a kind of truffled pasta alfredo, but this year, I’m going for stovetop truffled mac and cheese.

There are a number of reasons. First, Maille sent me a beautiful black and gold stoneware jar of Black Truffle and Chablis Mustard into which I have been furtively dipping shards of broken pretzel while standing in front of an open fridge for weeks. Time to put the stuff to use in something more worthy of it (although, really, I have never had such delicious pretzels or open-faced grilled cheeses in my life).

Second, and this speaks to why I’m doing stovetop mac and cheese, I find that the baked version can be a little unforgiving! If you don’t time it perfectly, it can seize up, go dry. One of my goals for 2017 is definitely to de-stress, to go easy, to forget about the unforgiving. So instead, I created an easier (I think) version that mixes happy, fat rigatoni with a blanketing cheese sauce, stuffed with sharp white cheddar and pecorino, and punctuated of course with that black truffle mustard for a hum of earthy sharpness. And if you need to slightly reheat the mac and cheese because it’s a party, and your timing is off, just add a little milk and reheat it. It’s so forgiving and consistently creamy and oozy and good.

Of course, I can’t forget the crunch of the top layer of traditional mac and cheese; instead, I toast breadcrumbs on the stove, with pecorino and parsley and truffle oil. These, you can sprinkle on each plate as you serve. Voila. As easy and delicious as I hope 2017 is for us all!

Happy New Year!

Easy and Lux Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Truffles and Mustard
serves 8
  Easy and Lux Stovetop Mac and Cheese with TrufflesINGREDIENTS
  • 2 lbs mezze rigatoni rigati
  • 2 tbs unsalted butter
  • 2 tbs all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • ½ lb grated sharp white cheddar cheese
  • ¾ cup finely grated Pecorino Romano
  • 1 tbs Maille Black Truffle and Chablis Mustard (NOTE: if you do not have truffle mustard, just use regular Dijon mustard and if you like, replace the butter in this recipe with black truffle butter)
  • 1 cup half and half
CRISPY TRUFFLE BREADCRUMBS
  • 2 tbs unsalted butter
  • ¾ cup panko breadcrumbs
  • ¼ cup finely grated Pecorino Romano
  • 2 tbs finely chopped flat leaf parsley
  • 1 tbs truffle oil
METHOD Boil the pasta to al dente (follow package instructions) in salted water. Drain. In the same pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour. Cook over medium heat until bubbling – 1 – 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk. Cook until sauce coats the back of a spoon. Whisk in cheeses and mustard and half and half. Taste for seasoning and salt as needed. Meanwhile, make the breadcrumbs. In a small skillet, melt the butter. Add the breadcrumbs and cheese and season with salt. Toast for about 5 – 7 minutes, until the panko is golden. Take off the heat and let cool. Toss the pasta with the cheese sauce. If it’s really thick, thin out with more milk as needed. Finish the breadcrumbs by mixing in the parsley and truffle oil. Serve a big bowl of hot, oozing pasta, and top with the crunchy crumbs.  print this recipe
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DINNER FOR TWO!: Crispy Salmon with Fresh Grated Tomato Broth and Hot Hot Hot Calabrian Chili Paste

RECIPE: Crispy Salmon with Fresh Grated Tomato Broth and Hot Hot Hot Calabrian Chili Paste

Salmon Tomato Calabrian ChiliI’m a creature of habit, and when I find something I love, I love it.  I have worn the same black jumpsuit to nearly everything all summer.  Same with this dish – I can’t get it out of my weekly rotation, and I would never want to!  Mr. English requests it.  He was gleeful when I made it Monday night.  My uncles were impressed – which impresses me – when I made a crowd-serving version in June.  It’s become a signature.

I love it for three reasons.  One: it’s so healthy, it’s nuts, and few things leave me feeling this guilt-free.  Two: it takes exactly fifteen minutes to make, so I make it nearly weekly after work.  #bestwifeever  And three: it looks very Park Avenue, so I can serve it when people come over and bask in the compliments – even though, as I said, it took me fifteen minutes to make.  Oh, and four!  It makes use of summer tomatoes, which I love and wait for all year long.  Don’t want those going to waste.

Ok, it’s amazing – but what is it?  It’s crispy pan-seared salmon fillets, seasoned only lightly with salt, nestled in a broth of fresh tomato, and topped with Calabrian chili paste and torn basil.  On the side, I serve a bowl of whole wheat couscous that steeps like tea in a bowl while I make the rest of the dish.

The salmon takes no effort.  I sear it in olive oil on both sides while I make the broth.  For the broth, I cut the tomatoes in half, and grate them on a box grater.  This is truly a revelation.  The skin stubbornly refuses to be grated, so you end up with a pile of perfect summer tomato flesh in thirty seconds, and the tomato peel sails into the trash.  I add some olive oil to a small saucepan, and add a whole clove of garlic.  When it’s golden, I add in the tomato flesh and some salt, and just cook it as long as it takes you to finish cooking the salmon.  I’m a weirdo who likes my salmon cooked all the way through, so that’s about 10 minutes.  The sauce is still fresh, but the raw edge is gone, and it’s breathtaking.  I serve it to my mom on zucchini noodles.  It goes with gnocchi.  It’s the best.

I serve it in wide, shallow bowls.  I spoon in the tomato broth, throwing away the garlic, which has already done what it set out to do.  Then, I settle the salmon in the middle of the warm broth.  I spoon just a dollop of Calabrian chili paste, spicy and full of olive oil and from the south of Italy, on top, and confetti on some basil (try tiny leaves of Greek or global basil, if you can get them).  The chili paste has a great flavor – I smear it over the fish, but you could also mix it into the broth.  It’s hot hot, so tread lightly.  The couscous is optional, but it really takes no work (just pour boiling water and a pinch of salt over the dry couscous in the serving bowl, and cover with plastic wrap for five to ten minutes), and it adds a nice heft the dish – plus it soaks up the extra broth like it was born to do it.  But baguette would work, as would a cool heritage grain, like farro.

That’s it!  For a crowd, I serve the broth and chili paste on the side, and roast a whole side of salmon in a low oven (325 degrees), scattering basil over the top before serving.  Then everyone can construct their own bowls.

In my mind, the perfect dinner for two.

Crispy Salmon with Fresh Grated Tomato Broth and Hot Hot Hot Calabrian Chili Paste
serves 2
Salmon Tomato Calabrian ChiliINGREDIENTS
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 clove of garlic, peeled and whole
  • 2 beefsteak or 3 vine-ripe tomatoes
  • 2 6-ounce fillets of center cut salmon
  • Calabrian chili paste – as much or little as you want
  • Fresh basil leaves – any kind you want
METHOD In a small saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.  At the garlic clove, and saute gently until golden brown.  Meanwhile, half the tomatoes, and light squeeze the halves over the sink to get rid of some seeds.  On the coarse side of a box grater, grate the tomato halves, skin-side-out.  Add the tomato pulp to the olive oil and toasted garlic clove.  Season with salt.  Leave to bubble uncovered, gently. Season the salmon with salt.  Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a 10-inch nonstick skillet.  Sear the salmon, skin-side-up for 5 minutes, then flip and cook 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how cooked you like it. Spoon the tomato broth into two wide, shallow bowls.  Place one salmon fillet in each.  Top with an angry dollop of chili paste.  And tear basil leaves over the whole thing.  Done! If you want to serve the couscous, put 1 cup of whole wheat couscous in a serving bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and a good pinch of salt.  Use a fork to mix it all together.  Then, pour over boiling water or vegetable stock, or a mix of both – 1 ¼ cups total.  Cover with plastic wrap.  Do this first, and the couscous will be perfectly fluffy by the time everything else is done.  Just fluff with a fork, and serve alongside.print this recipe
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Categories: 15 Minutes, Cheap, Easy, Eat, Fish, Main Courses, Recipes
 

Lemon Orecchiette with Rosemary…Cottage Cheese

RECIPE: Lemon Orecchiette with Rosemary...Cottage Cheese

Orechiette with Lemon, Rosemary, and Cottage Cheese

Mr. English and I came back from Puglia a few weeks ago.  The heel of the boot.  The Florida of Italy.  And while I love New York Italian food — or I thought I did before our trip — I am in acute withdrawal from real Italian pasta.

At our hotel, a masseria where all meals were (happily) taken on the premises, I was kept on a continuous drip of pasta.  But it wasn’t red sauce pasta.  It wasn’t Everests of Parmesan pasta.  It wasn’t guilty or heavy pasta.

Instead, the Italian pastas reminded me a bit of those interesting marriages between two personalities — one that seems calm, beige, simple, and the other that seems brash, ebullient, technicolor.  Taken apart, you can’t stand either, but together, you have the perfect dose of each.

So it was with my pastas in Puglia.  The pasta may have seemed like a blank canvas, but really it had its own interest.  Chubby little gnocchi.  Mustache twirls of trofie.  Greedy little orecchiette that gathered everything up in their little bowls.  And with these, a punchy pesto of zucchini flowers and summer garlic.  Raw halves of blush-hot cherry tomatoes.  Tangles of regal, bittersweet eggplant.  And that was it — just the two of them, with barely enough sauce to hold them together, or to pull them apart.

Then it was over.  The big skies and flat, shrubby land.  The white domed roofs.  The rustle of olive leaves, exchanging ancient gossip on the breeze.  Traded after a jet ride for hot concrete, glass, asphalt.  I sighed, and opened the fridge to whatever staples I had had to the foresight to order from Fresh Direct.

I love this pasta for being impromptu and unexpected, and kind of crazy.  And for being like those Italian pastas – light and punchy and summer.  I start with orecchiette, which I kind of believe goes with everything.  Although you could certainly use trofie, or anything that has that roughened, grizzled texture.  The sauce is just lemon juice and pasta water, whisked together with cold butter.  It is happy, and comforting – a salty yellow sweater.  To top it off, I mixed cottage cheese (yes, cottage cheese!) that I slightly drained with the zest of the lemon and chopped fresh rosemary.  You could definitely use ricotta in place of the cottage cheese, but I was using what I had, and I can’t tell you how unexpected the cottage cheese works in here, holding its own, adding creaminess without dissolving into a cream sauce.  You have to try it.

Lemon Orecchiette with Rosemary...Cottage Cheese
serves 2 – 4 (realistically, depending on how hungry you are)
Orechiette with Lemon, Rosemary, and Cottage CheeseINGREDIENTS
  • 1 1-pound box of orecchiette
  • 1 lemon
  • 2 twigs of fresh rosemary
  • 1 heaping ½ cup of full-fat cottage
  • 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, very cold
METHOD Cook the orecchiette according to package instructions in well-salted water until al dente. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water before draining. In the meantime, zest and juice the lemon, and finely chop the rosemary. Stir the lemon zest and rosemary into the cottage cheese. It’s up to you, but I love to drain my cottage cheese in a wide-mesh colander to dry it out a bit. Do that before you stir in the zest and rosemary! In the same pot in which you cooked the pasta, add ½ cup of reserved pasta water and the lemon juice over high heat. Add the butter and whisk constantly until completely melted and incorporated. Takes a minute or two. Shut off the heat immediately, and stir in the pasta. Season with salt if it needs it.  Add more pasta water if it needs it.  Serve with the rosemary cottage cheese on the side, and spoon into the center of each plate of steaming pasta.print this recipe
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Categories: 15 Minutes, Cheap, Easy, Eat, Main Courses, Recipes, Sides, Starches, Vegetarian, Vegetarian