Hey guys! So today I have a super duper really super healthy pasta dish for you!
(Did you detect my sarcasm through your screen?)
Really all I was being sarcastic about was the “healthy” part. This IS the slutty food blog, after all. Not the healthy food blog. There are enough of those.
This is one of our favorite pasta dishes of all time. And it’s not our recipe at all.
When we lived in Spokane, we became friends with this awesome guy named Ethan. He came over to eat a lot, which was great for me because I was learning how to cook and hadn’t quite yet learned to love leftovers, so having someone extra to feed at the table meant less food waste. He was always so polite and grateful and thankful and complimentary about whatever we fed him. So one day he invited us over to his house for dinner. He was going to make us his famous rotini recipe. Yum!
So I sat in the kitchen and watched him cook and I was so impressed with how simple this recipe was and how much flavor it had.
I feel obliged to share it with you all because it’s a super quick weeknight meal you can throw together for your family. This recipe makes a lot so it feeds a lot – four at least – or two really big helpings, which, I swear, uh, we have never eaten that much at one time in our house. Ever ever ever.
(Did you detect my sarcasm there?)
So go make this. What is better than easy, cheap, AND tasty?!
Ingredients
1 stick butter (8 tablespoons)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 14.5oz can diced, peeled tomatoes
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons fresh minced parsley
3 green onions, chopped
Salt and ground white pepper to taste*
1 tablespoon dried basil
12 ounces rotini
Directions
1. Heat onions and parsley in oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the can of diced tomatoes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and mix with a hand blender until the tomatoes are pureed. (Alternatively, if you don’t have a hand blender, pour the mixture into a regular blender and pulse until tomatoes are pureed. Return to saucepan.) Add salt and white pepper to taste. Add basil. Simmer 10 minutes on low heat.
2. Cook rotini according to package directions in a small stock pot and drain. Return to stock pot. Mix in butter until melted, then add Parmesan cheese. Add tomato sauce and stir. Serve and enjoy!!
NOTES:
* The ground white pepper truly makes the difference in this dish. You can use ground black pepper, but the white pepper gives it so much more flavor!