Day 01, Part 02

Guess how not to do a cooking blog!  Don't start off with a non-cooking post!

So, I am not cooking tonight!  My boyfriend-partner-fiance (I don't know what to call him in terms of today's standards; I feel that I will be upsetting someone for I am not promoting a way of life or I am repressing some group.  Perhaps, I will call him the "Other," so we can go back to the 1990s of literary criticism.  Yet, I digress.)

His specialty is making pasta, but the dry pasta and jar sauce kind.

Yeah.

I can't blame him.  It's quick, easy and cheap.  Sometimes, you cannot dine on all-day cooking (or your bank accounts will not allow it).

Okay, really, I am lazy.  I made for him my seared tuna with mango salsa last night.  (Recipe coming in a future blog entry.)

Yet, let me share with you some pearls of wisdom how to spruce up everyday pasta!

1.  Use the rinds of old blocks of Parmesan cheese.  If you buy your cheese pre-grated, shame on you!  It's easy and quick to grate your own (and it doesn't dry out as fast).  I save the rinds in the freezer.  While the pasta sauce is heating up, I drop in one rind, and, violà, you have a creamier, cheesier sauce.  (You might have to fish out the remaining rind before serving.)

2.  We cannot have pasta without garlic bread.  Vampires are not welcomed in my house, by the way.  A good way to spruce up the same-old garlic bread is add chopped rosemary and/or thyme.  It gives another dimension of flavor to the mundane expectation of garlic bread.

3.  You cannot have enough green when you make pasta.  Pasta for most Americans (By "Americans," I mean the inhabitants of the United States of America.  I realize that people from Argentina to Canada are, by definition, "Americans" of some sort.)  is a pale yellowish-white pasta with red sauce.  You need a contrasting color.  (I believe in the saying that "You eat with your eyes first.")  If we look at the color wheel, red is an opposite of green.  So, both colors will "pop."  Use Italian parsley (or flat-leaf parsley) as a topping.  It doesn't add much flavor, but it will give a more visually appealing aspect to the dish.  (Curly-leaf parsley is just decoration and has even less flavor!)

So, I realize that my blog is new, and no one is reading it, but if you happen to come across this particular entry, I have a question for you!

Question:  How do you make everyday pasta better/more exciting?

-Coquo ergo sum