Pasta, sauce and sauteed vegetables

Last year, over Memorial Day weekend, I visited a dear friend and her husband in Boston. The two of them engage in all sorts of food preparing endeavors upon which I've yet to embark, grilling pizzas and brewing beer being among the more exciting of them. I did, however, manage to pick up a couple tricks from them during my visit, which have now become staples 'round the Sanchez house. One of the tasty meals that my friend prepared for me was nothing more than sauteed veggies and homemade pasta sauce over spaghetti, but it was so good and so easy that it now finds itself regularly employed in my menu rotation. Thank you, dear friend.

While spaghetti or any pasta you prefer works fine, we've recently discovered (at Trader Joe's) and grown to love the bucati noodle. It's a long, thin and hollow tube. I've read it described as "toothy", which somehow perfectly captures the texture.

Sauce:

Pour two 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes into a small sauce pan, season as desired, and simmer for 30 or so minutes, or however long it takes to prepare the rest of your dinner. I use a Cuisinart Smart Stick hand blender to puree the sauce to a less chunky consistency, but this step depends on personal preference.

In my sauce, I like to: heat some olive oil in the pan and cook minced garlic in it for a minute before adding the tomatoes; add some oregano, basil and ground black pepper; and, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I add cooked carrots to the sauce before pureeing it. (These are the only sneaked vegetables I foist upon my children!)

Vegetables:

Heat 2 Tbs. olive oil in a large pan, and add vegetables. For this dinner, I like zucchini and broccoli and sometimes yellow pepper. Saute until tender-crisp, about 7 minutes, adding more oil if necessary. Add fresh minced garlic during the last minute of cooking, if desired. Spoon sauce on pasta; serve vegetables on the sauce. Enjoy!

Lime-Cilantro marinade/topping

(From Parents magazine, but I sure can't remember which issue.)

Whisk together 2 Tbsp each seasoned rice vinegar, lime juice, and soy sauce with 1 Tbsp chooped cilantro and 1 tsp grated ginger. Whisk in 1/3 cup canola oil. Makes 2/3 cup.

For 12 or fewer ounces of meat, reduce recipe by half.

The recipe says to use this with fish or pork. I haven't tried it with pork yet, but I have put it on salmon a few times and it is so tasty. Just pour over salmon prior to baking at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes (salmon is done when it flakes when pressed with a fork, evidently).

You can also bake or grill your salmon as desired and top with this after. That way the cilantro isn't all wilted. However, letting the salmon bake in this really helps the fish absorb the flavors from the lime.

I've also omitted the ginger a couple times, as I don't typically have ginger just laying around the kitchen. The ginger makes it even tastier, but is by no means necessary.

If I haven't made it clear how tasty this is, let me share this anecdote: I made this recently for a friend who had gotten food poisoning from salmon years ago (I didn't know!) and so only ate a couple bites of salmon off of others plates; she couldn't stand to eat a whole fillet herself. She liked it so much that she asked for the recipe and in doing so inspired me to revive Kuchenspiel. Thanks, Lexie!