Julie Usher's Easy Pasta Dish

Here's a delicious pasta dish that can be assembled and cooked with ease. It's one of those dishes that you can return to repeatedly - and I do - when the cupboard's looking a little bare, or when your energy is a little lacking.

It's got many great things going for it:  a healthy dose of garlic, cheese, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, heady greens and a good hit of red hot chilie peppers.

My friend Julie, a gifted cook, showed this number to me one evening and I reenacted the procedure the next day to produce a recipe. It's a basic outline, so once you get the hang of it, you can create your own riffs, tweaking the ingredients here and there.  And that's what makes cooking so fun, isn't it?

When we first made it we used arugula, but since then I've used mesclun greens, parsley and today I'm using big bunches of basil.

The pasta used should be something like penne or rotini, a type that can really take to the sauce.

Julie's Easy Pasta

500 gr. of rotini or penne

2 big handfuls of arugula or basil, stems removed. ( mesclun greens, spinach and even parsley can be substituted)

4-5 cloves garlic, minced

4 - 5 canned tomatoes, chopped fine

chilie peppers crumbled

1/4 c. balsamic vinegar

olive oil

freshly grated romano or parmesan

salt to taste

Cook the pasta and when almost done start the sauce. Pour a healthy amount of olive oil - around 1/3 of a cup - in a deep skillet or wok. Heat over med high heat, add the minced garlic and stir around a minute, careful not to brown. Add the tomatoes and saute another minute.

Add the chopped greens. Add salt, the balsamic vinegar, the chilie peppers, and finally the drained pasta.
Toss to combine. Check the seasonings. Add freshly grated cheese to each bowl. Enjoy!