I jumped several sections ahead a few weeks ago when I needed to make a pasta side dish for something (I don’t even remember what at this point). I don’t have this group scanned yet and I procrastinated on scanning the card–oh well. 🌿
We find 12-6: Seasoned Pasta Toss in Book 2, Group 2 (Main Courses), Subgroup 12 (Pasta & Rice). I still have a ton of parsley in my freezer and gluten-free rice pasta in my pantry, and it’s time to clean house.
Too bad it turned out to be less than impressive. It’s my fault, but still.
Looks pretty trashed, doesn’t it? That’s the damage I did to it in just this cooking session–it was pretty clean beforehand. It’s possible someone made this one, but there wasn’t any notations.
Ingredients. So here’s why my version probably sucked: I used rice pasta, jarred garlic, and frozen parsley. Don’t use the crappy versions of the real things like I did, and yours will probably turn out better.
Rice pasta is not good in this type of dish. I love it in Asian and other cuisines where it works, but it doesn’t work with everything.
We attempted paleo/gluten-free for like a week, and that week they happened to have gluten-free pasta on sale at the market. It may have cost me little in money, but it’s costing me a lot in quality of subsequent pasta dishes.
I used way too much parsley (since I was using half-frozen stuff and my measurements were sloppy) and it weighed down the already-gummy pasta. Add in sour jarred garlic (which works okay in certain dishes, but not in something as simple as this, where the garlic is a big part of the overall flavor) and it’s just a big mess.
Rice pasta has a tendency to stick together. I’ve tried adding a bit of oil to the water when boiling it to get it to separate, but it just refuses to cooperate.
Leftover rice pasta turns to mush as well in the fridge, much quicker than traditional pasta. I try not to make extras when we use it since it’ll just turn to yuckiness.
Fresh garlic and parsley would have made a big difference, even if you still used the rice pasta.
Now I remember! I was making fish nuggets–sort of a menueire nugget. I liked it, but I think I was alone on that one. 🙁
The final product. My suggestion: use good ingredients, and it’ll be awesome. Use crappy ingredients and well, you get what you put into it.
Grade: B
