Recipe - Pasta With Sauted Vegetables

1 pound Fresh pasta; One half pound dried
2 tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil
2 Cloves garlic; peeled and
cut or sliced up
3 cup Prepped raw vegetables such
as onion, pepper, squash,
mushrooms, eggplant,
spinach, or chard
One fourth cup Fresh basil; chopped
1 lg Tomato; peeled, seeded, and
chopped
One fourth teaspoon Red pepper flakes; crushed
Kosher salt; to taste
One half cup Parmesan cheese; grated

Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil in a large pot. Add dried pasta, and cook
to al denteto the tooth (just soft enough so that it still must be
chewed). Drain in a colander. For fresh pasta, turn the heat down to low,
cover the pot and hold water on warm until the vegetables are almost done
before you cook the pasta. Put oil and garlic into a large skillet. Turn
the heat to medium and cook the garlic just until it begins to color, not
beyond or it will burn and be bitter. Add the vegetables in the order that
they will cook, starting with those that will take the longest. Move them
constantly with a spatula so they will not overcook in one spot. For fresh
pasta, reboil the water at this point, and cook the pasta during final
minutes of cooking the vegetables. Drain. Add the herbs to the vegetables
and mix to distribute. When the vegetables are almost cooked (still a bit
too crunchy), add canned tomato and crushed pepper flakes, turn the heat
down to low, and simmer for 34 mi! ! ! nutes to blend the flavors. Taste
and add kosher salt if necessary.

NOTES : This quick, easy, and straight forward pasta recipe has been dinner
hundreds of times in my house. Timing is important: fresh pasta cooks in 3
~ 5 minutes, but dried pasta takes up to 12 15 minutes. I usually cook
dried pasta first, drain it, toss it with 1 One half tbsp. olive oil and cover
it while the vegetables cook. To serve, transfer the cooked, drained pasta
to the plates (with tongs) or to a pasta platter. Ladle the vegetables over
the pasta and garnish each serving with 2 tbsp. Parmesan cheese. Yield: 4
servings. Recipe by: Heidi Rabel Posted to MCRecipe Digest V1 #672 by Lisa
Whittington wildrose@community.net on Jul 14, 1997