A couple of weeks ago I took part in a webcast with Chef Lynn Crawford to learn more about Catelli’s new pasta – their Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains pasta.
Unfortunately I did not get to attend the event live (it was held in Calgary and I was in LA that day) so I didn’t get to sample the variety of ways that Chef Crawford prepared the Ancient Grains pasta. I have been preparing and eating the Ancient Grains pasta at home with my family but I have to admit, the little ones are not as open to food experimentation as I am. So last weekend when I was out of town at my family’s cottage I figured that was as good a time as any to try something new.
Seeing as I have limited water (and besides, who wants to be inside doing dishes when I could be outside enjoying the country air?!) at the cottage I like to do “one-pot cooking” as much as I can.
I brought the pot of water to a boil, dropped about half the box of Ancient Grains pasta into the box and noted the time. One of the things I learned from Chef Crawford is to not overcook pasta. 5-7 minutes and the spaghettini noodles were cooked.
I partially drained the noodles (I didn’t save any of the liquid which is kind of a no-no, but…) and then drizzled the cooked noodles with EVO.
Then I ripped open a package of mixed frozen vegetables and dumped them in on the still wet noodles. I stirred them in, poured on a bit more oil, some hot sauce, put the lid on the pot and then let it thaw/cook on the still hot stove element.
About 3-5 minutes later I opened the lid and tasted the veggies – warm right through.
Although I could have eaten from the pot, I figured the Instagram pics would look better if I plated the spaghettini and veggies. I do wish that I had cleaned the edge of the plate up a little better!
The end result was a a truly delicious dinner that was also a much healthier meal than simply choosing plain old regular pasta.
Simple and easy to make – my kind of cottage country cooking!