I'm just getting home from work at 6:15 on a weekday evening. My job is to get the family dinner on the table at 7 o'clock. Moreover, I have to come up with something to satisfy all four of us.
Kate, age 11, is a vegetarian who, as she puts it, "won't eat anything that has a face." Jake, at 15, seems to wake up taller every morning and won't be satisfied with anything dainty. My wife, Susan, and I prefer that the meal be reasonably healthful and have a "grown-up" flair.
The last-minute solution to such a dilemma in our house, and probably in yours, is usually a big bowl of pasta. But then what? Hours of tending a slow, burbling pot on the stove? If my thoughts ever drifted in that traditional direction, they haven't since reading Marcella Hazan, dean of Italian cookbook writers, who acknowledges in "Marcella's Italian Kitchen" (Random, 1995) that when pasta dinners come to mind, we all tend to retain the "nostalgic image of a portly, grandmotherly woman" endlessly stirring a sauce.
"Fortunately," she quickly adds, "it is only a fantasy." Of the thousands of ways to augment pasta, Hazan points out, only a few take more than 15 to 20 minutes.
The fastest of all, I've happily discovered, are the surprising variety of throw-together pasta toppings that are amenable to lightning-fast assembly using ingredients almost always on standby in the pantry or refrigerator.
Add a little creative elan and impulse, and you've got memorable meal-savers. My choice for tonight is a simple mix of perfect no-cook companions: Pasta With Asiago Cheese and Spinach, featuring emerald-green spinach and flecks of intensely red sun-dried tomatoes bathed in the subtle sheen of olive oil.
Not only is this quick toss bursting with color, it's also ready by the time the pasta is al dente. And it's not dull. Asiago, a cow's-milk cheese that is creamy and mild when young but gains sharpness as it ages into a grating cheese, adds a kick, which is eased by a scraping of Parmesan cheese. A final touch of savor comes from garlic. At dinner's end, the pasta bowl is empty and our plates are all clean.
Because these throw-together pastas require no separately prepared sauce, they've become a regular feature in our household. But there are a couple of caveats.
First, you must find and stock all the right ingredients. Impossible? Until a few years ago, and in some locations, perhaps. But today, stocking a new Italian pantry is as easy as a little forethought.
