Lunch

This is a make-shift pasta dish I invented over the weekend. Was so delicious, I wanted to pass it onto you! If you look closely you will see that I used two kinds of pasta, no fancy reason for that, I just discovered I had a little penne left in one bag and threw it in with the new bag of rigatoni. The rigatoni is a slightly heavier noodle than the penne, but the cook time didn't change. I like my pasta firm, usually 10 minutes in a high altitude kitchen and I always add salt to my pasta water, seems to bring out the flavor of the noodle more. While your noodles are cooking, heat some olive oil in a shallow pan, add grape tomatoes that are halved, thinly sliced garlic and scallions (with some of the green part) and some chopped fresh parsley (I had a tiny bit of zucchini, about a 1/4 of one, that I cut up and threw in too). Cook this until the vegetables are soft but still colorful, this will take about 10 minutes like the pasta. Let vegies cool while you strain your noodles. Let the pasta cool slightly too. While everything is cooling off, wash and dry and trim a bunch of watercress greens, and by a bunch I mean a lot of it! Watercress is the latest food I am crazy about. It has a distinctive bite that reminds me of a radish (watercress is in the mustard family). To plate your lunch place a bunch of watercress onto a serving  plate. Place the warm pasta over the watercress, top with the sauteed vegetables, add some chip-like slices of asiago cheese, drizzle with a little more olive oil, sprinkle on some Celtic salt (the only kind I use), and give it a few turns from a pepper mill. A few weeks ago I made something similar but added chicken strips to the vegetable saute. That was good too, and more filling. This fresh pasta salad is super easy to make. I can whip this up in my studio, when I should be painting, I'm cooking and eating instead!