I adapted this recipe from one published in the Washington Post (8/16/23). It was based on a recipe in Toni Okamoto's Plant-Based on a Budget: Quick and Easy.
Serves 2 - 3 (easily doubled or tripled for a group)
Ingredients
8 ounces of spaghetti or other pasta
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil
1/2 cup hummus, plain or any flavor
1/2 cup chopped fresh tomatoes1/3 cup sliced Kalamata olives, plus some for garnish if desired
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, plus some for garnish if desired
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice or more to taste
Cook the pasta according to the directions. While it’s cooking, measure the other ingredients and chop them as needed.
When the pasta is done, reserve 2/3 cup of the cooking water before draining the rest.
Return the cooked pasta and 1/3 cup of the reserved water to the same pot. Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes, hummus, fresh tomatoes, olives, basil, lemon juice and pepper. Toss to combine. Add additional cooking water until the sauce is the consistency you like. Taste the mixture and add salt, pepper, and additional lemon juice to taste.
If desired, garnish with more tomatoes, olives, and basil. Serve warm.
Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.
Val and Granddad attend a mystery fan fest that features a bake-off between contestants playing the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad competes against Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson, played by Cynthia Sweet. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook newspaper column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival-goers to find the one with the biggest beef against Ms. Not-So-Sweet.
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One of our favorite pasta dishes is for Cavitini. Pizza Hut use to serve it years ago. When they discontinued it, it took hubby and I a few ties and misses to come up with the flavor that was what that dish had.
ReplyDeleteThe dish has 3 types of cooked pasta (for variety more than taste), pepperoni, sliced bell peppers and onions, mushrooms and sauce all layered in an oven proof dish and then topped with mozzarella cheese. Then baked. It was the sauce that was a problem to figure out. It wasn't pizza sauce and it wasn't spaghetti sauce. We finally decided it was more of a mixture of the two. We laughingly said that it was a dish Pizza Hut made out of all their leftovers from the day before. We still love it and have it regularly.
2clowns at arkansas dot net
Thanks for your comment and the recipe suggestion, Kay. My family loves baked pasta dishes.
DeleteYour sliced tomatoes are a perfect visual foil for the pasta.
ReplyDeleteI would never have thought of hummus as pasta sauce, but tahini is a surprising taste addition to many dishes, so this has a certain logic to it.
Thanks, Libby. I'd never thought about hummus as a pasta sauce either, but we've eaten pasta with chickpeas and vegetables when we have vegetarians visiting. Making a hummus sauce struck me as not so different.
DeleteI love whole wheat angel hair tossed with grape tomatoes and a little garlic. aprilbluetx at yahoo dot com
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, April. It's hard to be tomatoes and garlic.
ReplyDeleteSound delicious thank you for the recipe
ReplyDelete