Archive for March 7th, 2009

The vegetables and shrimp in their pan, ready to be added to the pasta.

“Primavera” means “first green,” or “spring” in Italian, something I learned from my Italian-American husband a few years back. This dish is one I taught myself to cook by watching him and reading recipe books, but since that time I’ve forgotten where in our cook’s library it is written down. Pasta Prima Vera takes about an hour if you work consistently, including the time used to cut up vegetables. I have a tendency to cut up all the vegetables a few hours ahead, though, because I get tired at the end of the day. If you do that, the dish is almost effortless to cook at dinner time.

Start by filling a dutch oven 3/4 full of water, adding 1 tsp salt , and putting it on the stove to boil. Plan to use 1 to 1.5 lbs pasta for this recipe. We often use mini-shells or farfalle (bowties) but it’s really up to you. You could even use spaghetti, but it would make eating the dish difficult to eat since as you rolled the spaghetti around your fork the vegetables would tend to fall off.

Start to cut up the vegetables. First, cut up 1 to 1/2 bell peppers, any color. You may add to this a couple of celery stalks and a carrot, chopped well, if you like. Heat a generous amount of olive oil (1/4 cup would not be too much) and saute’ the vegetables in a large skillet.

Chop up one large or 2 medium onions and three or more cloves garlic. Add to the skillet after 2 or three minutes of cooking the peppers. I have to tell you the truth, I cut up all the vegetables before frying anything, then leave them in small bowls, ordering them from longest to shortest cooking.

After you’ve cooked those for two to three minutes, you can add a chopped up zuchini and a chopped up yellow crook neck squash. Cook that for a few more minutes, when they begin to look done, you can add, if you like, a couple of chopped up tomatoes and some sliced mushrooms. Cook just enough to soften a bit and remove from heat.

You can add vegetables if you like, as long as you know about how long they cook and when to add them in the cooking sequence. You can remove vegetables as well; the critical ones would be onions and garlic, though personally I would probably not try this recipe without at least those two plus peppers and squash.

The skillet should be pretty full of vegetables at this point. Add 1 lb. shrimp, fork size, pre-cooked and stir together with vegetables. Now put the pasta in the boiling water. When it’s cooked, drain and add the vegetables and shrimp. Pour another generous helping of olive oil, salt and pepper over the entire dish and stir in. Serve with grated dry Italian cheese such as Romano, Parmasano or Grana Padano. Enjoy!