20 pasta recipes to simplify your weeknight

Find comfort and ease with these 20 pasta recipes.

9. Spaghetti with artichoke hearts, sausage, and olives

Blue Kitchen
Spicy Italian sausage, onion, and garlic with artichokes and olives combine for a hearty pasta dish.

By Terry Boyd, Blue Kitchen

Serves 2 generously (see Kitchen Notes)

3 tablespoons olive oil
6 ounces spicy Italian sausage (see Kitchen Notes)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
6-ounce jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained
1/2 roughly chopped green olives
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces uncooked dry spaghetti

1. Start a large pot of water to cook pasta. While water is coming to a boil, prep the other ingredients. As the water reaches boiling, heat olive oil in medium sauté pan over medium flame. Salt pasta water generously and start cooking pasta.

2. Add sausage to sauté pan and cook, stirring frequently and breaking up meat with a wooden spoon, for about 2 minutes. Make a hole in the middle of the pan and add onion. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes. Toss onion and sausage to combine, then make another hole and cook garlic until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Mix everything together, then make one last hole and add tomato paste. Cook paste for 1 or 2 minutes, pressing it into the pan to brown slightly.

3. Add a ladleful of pasta water to the pan (about 1/2 cup). Add artichoke hearts and olives and toss everything to combine. Reduce heat to low. Season lightly with salt and generously with black pepper.

When pasta is on the very al dente side of done, drain (reserving additional pasta water) and add to sauté pan. Toss to combine and let cook for a minute or so to let pasta absorb some of the sauce, adding more pasta water by tablespoonfuls as needed (I added about 3 tablespoons). There won’t be a sauce per se with this dish; it’s more a coloring and coating (and flavoring) of the pasta.

Taste and adjust seasonings. Divide between two shallow bowls and serve.

Read the full post on Stir It Up!

9 of 20

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.