Angel Hair Pasta with Gruyere and Parmigiano

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups milk (ideally whole or with a bit of cream added to low fat) 

1 or 2 shallots
1/4 pound or so of mushrooms
3 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
4 or 5 ounces of gruyere
1 or 2 ounces of parmigiano 
Salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste
8 ounces angel hair pasta

Where the quantities are flexible above, exact amounts don't matter much. Get the approximate scale right, and it'll be good.

Steps

 Put the milk in a measuring cup and microwave on high for a minute and a half.

Start your pasta water on its way to boiling.

 

Put one tablespoon of butter in a large non-stick pan over low-medium heat.

Mince the shallots, aiming for about a quarter cup.

Swirl or brush the butter around the pan, and add the shallots.

Slice the mushrooms about a quarter inch thick, and then cut smaller ones in half and larger ones in thirds.

Add the mushrooms to the pan, and stir everything around.

Grate the cheese while stirring the shallots and mushrooms occasionally. Aim for a full cup of cheese, at least 3/4 Gruyere.

Push the shallots and mushrooms to one side of the pan and add two more tablespoons of butter.

When the butter has melted and started to foam, add the flour, a double pinch of salt, roughly the same amount of grated pepper, and a single pinch of nutmeg.

Mix the flour quickly into the butter and keep stirring rapidly for about a minute. Include the vegetables in the stirring because they're hiding butter.

Add a third of that warm milk and stir rapidly into everything else. Repeat two more times, and stir until it's the consistency of melted ice cream throughout.

Turn off the heat but leave the pan on the burner. Dump in the cheese and stir it around a little. Then leave it to melt quietly.

Put the pasta in the water, and do what you need to stirring gently to loosen the nests.

Drain the pasta when it's cooked.

Turn the heat back on beneath the sauce, and stir quickly to be sure the cheese is fully blended in.  Watch for steam to rise off the pan a bit, using that as your sign that it will be happily warm-hot when you start eating.  Don't let it boil.

Remove from sauce from heat and combine with the pasta.  My pan was big enough to dump the pasta right in. Putting both in a bowl would also work.

Taste and consider adding more pepper.

Note
This is basically macaroni and cheese using William-Sonoma's Easy Peasy kid-oriented recipe, but with subtler ingredients. At Molly and Jim's wedding buffet, the pasta had both cheese and mushrooms, and this is my first use of that inspiration.

Regular spaghetti sauce with anything but spaghetti

Sometime very early in mom-life, I realized that children with forks could handle almost every kind of pasta better than than they could manage spaghetti.  Somewhat later, I realized that Susans with forks also benefit from this strategy.  

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef (Your mom strongly recommends for Laura's Lean or explicitly organic, on account of hormones and slime and ugh.  She even more strongly recommends the kind that's at least 90% lean, meaning no more than 10% fat.)
1 large jar spaghetti sauce
1 pound pasta (gemelli, rotini, fusilli, bow-ties, elbow macaroni, etc.)

Steps
Put the pasta water on to boil.

Put a dutch oven on another burner, turn on the heat high, and put the ground beef into the pan right away.  After a minute or two, start breaking it up with a spatula.

When the beef is all in little pieces, make sure you can get the lid off the spaghetti sauce.  If brute strength is not an option, try whapping the edge of the lid with the side of a knife a lot.

Go back to flipping and stirring the ground beef, watching for red and pink bits until there are absolutely none in sight.

If you took your mom's advice and got the lean beef, there won't be much grease in the pan. You can just add the sauce, stir a couple of times, and move the pan off of the heat.  If you didn't, go to the serpents' tooth directions below.

Put the pasta in the water and set a timer for the recommended number of minutes.

When the timer goes off, use a spoon to take out one piece of pasta, drop it in the colander, run cold water over it, and bite it to see if it's right.  

If yes, drain all the pasta.  

If no, cook another minute and check again.

Serpent's tooth directions
When the beef is cooked, if you didn't take your mom's advice and there's lots of grease, run the hot water in the sink until its really hot.  Leave it running while you put a colander into the sink and empty the beef pan into it.  Put the pan back on the stove, shake the colander once or twice, and then quickly toss the beef back into the pan.  Now you can add the sauce, stir a couple of times, and move the pan off the heat.

Put the pasta in the water and set a timer for the recommended number of minutes.

Remember the greasy colander?  Go back to the sink and run hot water all over the colander to get the grease off of it.  Now you can turn off the hot water. (If you turned it off before your mom said to, you'll get what you deserve and I won't even bother explaining about grease in sink pipes.)

When the timer goes off, use a spoon to take out one piece of pasta, drop it in the colander, run cold water over it, and bite it to see if it's right.  

If yes, drain all the pasta.  

If no, cook another minute and check again.

Pork bits and carrots on spaghetti

This is pretty the only recipe I have ever made that needs actually long stringy pasta. There's a texture issue that matters. It's also my only sauce that is actually made in the microwave. It's fab.

Ingredients
1 pound pork boneless shoulder or boneless pork chops or pork loin (something you can cut into bits)
3 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-inch piec (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 teaspoon "better than bouillion" or one bouillion cube
3/4 cup water
2 teaspoons chopped fresh or 3/4 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons cold water

1 pound spaghetti or angel hair pasta
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon grated parmesan

Directions
Cut pork into 3/4-inch pieces, removing any fat that's easy to remove.

Mix pork, carrots, onion and garlic in 2-quart casserole.

Cover tightly and microwave on medium (50%) 9 to 11 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes, until pork is no longer pink and vegetables are crisp-tender.

Stir in bouillion, basil, and pepper.

Cover tightly and microwave 20-30 minutes, stirring every 6 minutes, until pork is tender.

After the pork has cooked 20 minutes  put on the water the stove and start heating it to cook the pasta.

When you're sure the pork is done, mix cornstarch and water thoroughly and stir into pork mixture.

Cover tightly and microwave on high 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes or until mixture thickens and boils.

While that's happening, cook the pasta.

Drain the pasta fully, then mix in first the butter and the parmesan.

Serve pork and vegetables over spaghetti.

Tuna-Pasta Salad

This actually started out as Grandma Charlotte's recipe, and I think she started out with a potato salad idea from The Joy of Cooking.

Ingredients
1 pound spiral pasta
1 cup Wishbone Italian Salad Dressing Accept No Substitutes
13 ounces of white tuna in water
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup of chopped celery
1/4 cup of chopped up sweet gherkins
Anything else you like in a summer salad: canned corn, fresh cooked corn, green pepper, red pepper

Steps
Cook the pasta according to the package

While it cooks, do any needed chopping.

Open and drain the tuna, then empty into a large mixing bowl and break it into small pieces.

Add the mayonnaise, celery, gherkins, and anything else you like to the tuna and mix well.

When the pasta is done, drain it, then instantly shake up the salad dressing and pour it on to the pasta, stirring well to spread it around.  Let it sit for a couple of minutes for those flavors to blend.

Add the pasta to the tuna and again mix well.

Eat warm or chill and eat later.