Pasta with a kick

Remember almost a year ago how I wrote a post about the woes of moving? Remember how I wrote about how disappointing it was to have to pack away your kitchen and become severely limited in what you could bake or cook? Remember how I wrote later how nice it was to finally get more settled into our new apartment? Those were the days, weren’t they? I think I am remembering it all too fondly because …drumroll… we’re doing it again. Except this time we aren’t moving around the corner – we’re moving to the other side of the country.

Look! We saved boxes from our last move!

Yep – after eight years, we’re saying good bye to the Big Apple and saying hello to the Emerald City (translation: Seattle, WA) or at least one of its neighboring towns. This is something that we have wanted to do for a few years now, but circumstances were never really in our favor to do it. Then we realized a few months ago that the circumstances would never be in our favor. We’d always have an excuse to stay in New York – the work, the food, the restaurants, the familiarity, et cetera, et cetera. We’re grown ups, though, and we finally decided that we couldn’t let any of that get in the way of living a life we’ve been dying to try for a long time.

At this point we’re in the final stages of packing which means our kitchen is reduced to memories of baking cookies and rolling out hand made tortillas. I am in that quandary of “what can I make that’s already in my cupboard?”, also known as a science experiment that could go horribly awry.

Lucky for me, though, I still had the right ingredients to make a pasta dish based upon a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen, called Enraged Penne – except I had rigatoni, so I am calling this one Enraged Rigatoni. It’s a simple dish, but has a nice kick to it which you can increase or decrease as you like. The original recipe calls for fresh tomatoes, but if you don’t have them the canned variety works well.

Enraged Rigatoni

• 1 package rigatoni or penne pasta (I used whole wheat pasta)
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3-5 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
• ½ to 1 teaspoon chili flakes
• 1 16-ounce can diced tomatoes (do not drain unless you want a drier pasta dish)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Boil the pasta according to package directions.

While the pasta is boiling, put your olive oil in a hot pan then add the chopped garlic. Continuously stir the garlic around until it starts looking slightly toasted.

Freshly prepared garlic

Stir in the chili flakes, and stir around for another minute or so.

Add as much or as little kick as you like

Pour in the diced tomatoes and salt, then stir. Let the liquid reduce somewhat because you do not want the pasta to be too soupy. You should have a nice balance between pasta and sauce.

Canned tomatoes are a fine stand in for fresh tomatoes in this dish

Once the sauce is done, stir in the drained pasta and then serve with chili peppers and/or basil as a garnish.

Stir the rigatoni and the tomato sauce together

I really love the simplicity of this dish, but if you like yours with a little extra flavor I’d suggest trying any or all of the following variations.

How about frying up onions with your garlic and pepper? You could also add mushrooms, but to avoid the sauce becoming too soupy I would saute the mushrooms in a separate pan first, then drain the water off, and then add the cooked mushrooms at any point in the cooking. I’d also recommend adding chopped basil to the dish just after the heat is turned off, so that it will wilt, but not be overcooked. A final suggestion would be to add a little bit of red cooking wine (about ¼ cup) for your garlic to soak up before adding in the tomatoes.

A nice, spicy pasta

When you move, what do you do for food? Do you try to use up what is in your cupboards or is it take out all the way?