Another sauce with tuna:
Saute garlic and/or onion in olive oil in skillet.
Add a couple cans of your preferred tuna (this also works with about ANY canned seafood product: clams, shrimp, salmon…)
Add fresh or dried herbs-of-choice: parsley, basil, oregano etc.
Dump on spaghetti or linguine.
Spaghetti Mizithra!
Supposedly this is what Homer ate exclusively while writing the Iliad. My favorite pasta dish, and it’s so easy from scratch:
1 lb spaghetti (or penne, or whatever you prefer)
3/4 cup unsalted butter (you could use salted, but the cheese is pretty salty)
mizithra cheese
Cook the noodles.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. I usually toss in a spoon of minced garlic and a couple shakes of oregano. Let the butter simmer for a few minutes, then remove from heat. Use a spoon to skim off and discard the white solids that separated from the butter.
Add the “clarified” butter to the noodles. Add finely grated mizithra cheese and stir. Lots of it. Go on, a little more.
The most time-consuming part is cooking the noodles. And by far the hardest part is finding the mizithra (aka mizythra or myzithra) cheese. It’s around $10/lb at a few large grocery stores, and $6/lb if you can find it at a Greek/Italian importer. Anyone know of such a place in Houston?
ETA: The cheese will last forever in the fridge, so if you find it at a good price buy several pounds!
Oh, sure! Adjust to taste and consistency.
Oh, for that I’d have to recommend Pad Thai.
I use a box of thin stir-fry rice noodles (or lately I’ve been using a half-box of really fine rice noodles), half a jar of prepared Pad Thai sauce, a fistfull of frozen stir-fry veggie mix, a chicken breast (or tofu - bleh) cut up and sauteed in (olive) oil, a fistfull of frozen cooked shrimp (optional), and a scrambled egg (optional). Maybe serve it with lime juice (optional), chopped peanuts (optional), and bean sprouts (optional).
It takes 15-25 minutes with practice. Just basically follow the instructions on the sauce jar. The sauce is red, but usually doesn’t contain tomatoes.
I more or less use the cold sesame noodle recipe from Cooks Illustrated. They call for something like 3 tbsp toasted sesame seeds and 1/4 peanut butter (but I’m sure almond butter would be delicious). I blend that with a couple of garlic cloves and fresh ginger, along with soy, rice wine vinegar (I think), a tiny bit of sugar and enough warm water to get the texture right.
You rinse the noodles with cold water and then add a few tsps sesame oil and mix that well before adding the sauce as well as diced chicken. Top with more toasted sesame seeds, scallions if you like, grated carrots if you like. Yum!
Easy, fast, delicious and can be adapted in tons of various ways.
Lemon Pasta
Toss hot, cooked pasta with equal parts lemon juice and olive oil.
Season with:
Lemon zest, salt and pepper.
Chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, whatever you have on hand)
Grated Parmesan or other sharp dry cheese
Top with:
Seafood
Chicken
More cheese
Toasted nuts
Olives
Sauteed spinach or other greens
Beef Stroganoff. Can’t vouch for that particular recipe, but it looks much the same as what Grandma used to make when we were kids. I’m going to try it out.
Hamburger Stroganoff is great for days when you don’t want to cook.
Brown hamburger, add cream of mushroom soup and milk. Spice with salt and pepper. Sometimes we add garlic powder or red pepper flakes.
Pour over egg noodles, serve with sour cream.
Dice up some celery and onions (a couple of tablespoons each) and brown them in some butter. Then add a cup of heavy cream and a cup of ricotta cheese. Heat this until it’s hot (but don’t bring it to a boil) and stir in a cup of gorgonzola cheese. Heat it up again and serve on pasta.
I’d like to throw in a vote for mustard greens, as an alternative to spinach, to any of these suggestions. It has a different flavor. I don’t really even cook it; as with spinach you just throw it in the hot pasta and it cooks well enough.
I enjoy mixing penne pasta with asparagus, cut into similarly sized pieces. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper and some cheese and you’ve got instant yum.
I am now dying to convert my peanut recipes into almond butter recipes. I love that stuff.
Garlic wine sauce.
I got the recipe from a local restaurant:
Garlic
White wine
Salt
Pepper
Butter
Cook until you think it’s ready, then serve with grated Parmesian.
And I’ll second the enthusiasm for pesto.
Pesto can also be made with walnuts and cilantro. Or just about any nut and any fresh herb - it’s all a matter of preference. Just play around a bit.
One of my faves when I happen to have a bunch of mushrooms and sour cream to use up: dice & saute some onions and garlic and mushrooms. When they are almost done, add a bit of sherry, some sage, some black pepper, and some sour cream (and Parmesan or Romano or Asiago if you have it handy). Mix and warm through, and serve over pasta. (This is good with spinach added, too.)
I’ve starting using whole wheat pasta and found it’s kind of mealy, or grainy (I know, it’s probably supposed to be grainy) or something when I used it in cold pasta salad. I cooked it to al dente so it would stand up, but maybe it’s just not as good in cold salads as white pasta? I’ve only tried it once, though, so any reassurances or tips would help.
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Asian (or really any other kind) noodles in miso soup. You can make miso soup fancy, with all kinds of exotic seaweed and Japanese vegetables, or you can just make it with ginger, garlic, miso and a dash of soy sauce.
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For peanut sauce alternatives, you could experiment with replacing peanut butter with tahini, which is ground sesame seeds (in other words, sesame butter). Probably would make OK sesame noodles.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate the recipes with spinach and greens - my garden is really starting to produce those now. I’m getting ideas!
I just came up with an amazing tomato-free pasta dish that we’ve had two weeks in a row. It features asparagus, so now’s the perfect time for this dish. You could make it with any kind of pasta, but I used rhombi. Basically, roast asparagus and mushrooms with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then mix together with cooked pasta and finish with your grated cheese of choice. Further details and a sexy photo at the bottom of my blog post, here.
We do a thyme pasta here - well, we used to before I became gluten intolerant.
Lots of thyme in olive oil - saute chicken or tofu.
Steam asparagus (I suppose you could try something else) just a little.
Boil pasta.
Drain pasta - remove protein from oil, add pasta to oil, stir to coat, add back protein and asparagus.
Dangerosa, aren’t there non-gluten pasta choices? Rice noodles, perhaps? Others?
Hrmm… after looking through the recipes, this will seem very lame in comparison, but it is still one of my favorite dishes to this day…
half lb or so of egg noodles
1 can of tuna fish
1 can of combo cream of mushroom/chicken
add some milk if you want it creamier
Simple, i know. Stupidly easy to fix though, and I still find it delicious. Likely because it was what dad made when mom was gone for the night. 
Noodles + a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom/Chicken/Etc.
