With all the superlative produce available this time of year, summer would seem a prime time for cooking — were it not for the soaring temps, the siren call of relaxing in the shade at the community pool and the desire to produce meals that raise the temperature of your kitchen as little as possible.
So I’m confident I speak for most of us when I say we love a one-pot pasta dish any time of the year, but maybe most in the summer. Aside from the obvious convenience of having fewer dishes to wash — especially welcome after a long work day — the platonic ideal gets you from zero to dinner with little elbow grease.
I’ve made a few of those versions through the years — the ones in which you throw pasta and vegetables into a deep-sided skillet filled with a liquid, usually water, and let the whole mess simmer away to produce cooked noodles, vegetables and aromatics for a saucy end result.
But in the summer, I like to lean into a one-pot pasta that requires barely any cooking at all, save for boiling the noodles. The general idea is to let the hot, just-boiled pasta, along with a splash or two of its starchy cooking water, aid in binding the noodles and just-warmed-through peak-season produce for a dish that’s fresh, filled with bursts of juicy summer flavors and, best of all, ideal for casual weeknights, sweltering days or entertaining with little effort. The fringe benefit is that these ripe, in-their-prime ingredients retain the qualities that make them so exceptional.
It’s all very straightforward. You bring a large pot of water to a boil, and while you wait for that, you prep the other ingredients: Chop the sugar snap peas — still in their pods — into bite-size pieces, husk the corn, and cut the kernels off the cobs. (By laying the cob parallel to the cutting board and slicing the kernels off, then rolling the cob to trim more kernels off, you’ll be avoiding bits of corn shooting in every direction.)
Halving the cherry tomatoes takes mere seconds if you snugly arrange them between two deli container lids and then cut across. Mint leaves can be stacked on top of one another, rolled like tiny cigars, and sliced into mini ribbons. The lemon gets zested, then juiced.
Once the water is boiling, salt it, then taste it to make sure it’s pleasantly seasoned; cook your pasta until al dente, reserve a splash of water, and drain. Then the noodles return to the bowl, along with some goat cheese, the prepped produce and a splash of the starchy pasta liquid, and everything gets tossed gently.
The vegetables retain their juicy, cooling crunch. And when spooned into bowls, dinner looks festive, bright and immensely appetizing. Even my skeptical 8-year-old, who at first refused to try it upon hearing the words “goat cheese,” gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up and asked for seconds.
Dinner success aside, I was pleased as punch cleaning up after dinner, even if it meant I was a few minutes closer to dealing with a towering basket of laundry that was waiting to be folded and put away.
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2023-06-30 15:44:36Z
CBMiT2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9mb29kLzIwMjMvMDYvMzAvc3VtbWVyLXBhc3RhLWNvcm4tcGVhcy10b21hdG9lcy_SAQA
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