Pasta With Broccoli and Artichokes

Day 7-Still counting the days. I feel less depressed today even though I don't feel well. Let me just state for the record, I do not believe my food is the cause of my illness. Anthony eats all the same things as me and is as healthy as a horse. (Apparently horses are very healthy!) I'm hoping there will still be cooking happening tonight, but I will just have to wait and see how I feel.

Onto last night. I felt the need for redemption. After that terrible excuse for a pasta dish-Pasta Ponza and let's not forget the Pasta Nests-I really felt like I needed to redeem myself. I'm not creating these recipes (I haven't gotten to that stage yet), but I'm assuming they work out perfectly when the recipe creators make them. Maybe it's my lack of skill and finesse in the kitchen. I won't give up that easily. I refuse to believe that as an Italian, I can not make a good pasta dish. Plus I make really good lasagna and that's pasta! That's why I decided to make Pasta With Broccoli and Artichokes. I'm not quite sure why the title of the recipe is what it is. There is more in the dish then broccoli and artichokes, such as red peppers, onions, and black olives. I guess the name would have been ridiculous though if it were, Pasta With Broccoli, Artichokes, Red Peppers, Onions, and Black Olives.

As we all know I am not good when it comes to cutting food products. This recipe was daunting. Here is a picture of all the items I needed to cut, plus parsley is omitted from the photo.

Yikes! I was up for the challenge though, all I wanted was for the dish to look like the picture in the cookbook and to taste good. I chopped the broccoli up (most likely not correctly) and put it on the stove to steam. I did have to review with Anthony how to steam veggies. I know I steamed green beans earlier in this blog, but that was before vacation. Also I'm super proud of myself for using fresh broccoli. The recipe only calls for 1 cup of cooked broccoli, chopped. I could have used frozen, but I didn't want to take the easy way out. I then sliced the red pepper (definitely not the proper way! Glad Anthony didn't walk in!) and onion (I'm getting a little better at those) and put them in the skillet to cook.

I had to mix a couple of opened boxes of pasta, a ziti and penne. It didn't look like enough with only the one, although looking back it would have been. I wanted to cut the recipe in half, because I didn't want to be eating this all week again. Since I cooked a bit too much pasta though, I think it screwed up the ratios of everything else. Oh well. You can't win them all and I am slowly losing the battle with pasta. The rest of the recipe was easy enough, slicing artichokes wasn't a big deal and chopping olives takes awhile, but was doable. I did have to substitute red wine vinegar for sherry vinegar since I didn't have that. In another recipe I cooked recently you could substitute one for the other, so I assume that's common, but I don't really know.

After all the cooking is done everything gets mixed together. The pasta dish looked like the picture to me and I cooked everything right, but where the heck was the flavor. I found it really bland. We put some Romano cheese on it, but I don't even think that helped much. Hmm...peculiar.

Final Product :

My thoughts: I would add some spices or more Italian herbs to this dish. It needs something. I was even thinking maybe balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. I'm not going to rush to try this again, but if I can't come up with enough meals one week I might make this and tweek it.

Totals: 10 minutes prep, 15 minutes cooking time, 2 pots, 1 skillet, 1 steamer basket

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This recipe is from Cook's Encyclopedia of 30-Minute Cooking.