5-minute dinner

A cheap alternative to going to a restaurant for dinner is to buy fresh pasta and cook it at home. The closest place to me is Dave's Fresh Pasta, which makes very tasty pasta and will cut it into any width for you. This month's special is Black Pepper Pasta for $3.00/lb.

Tonight we had Black Pepper Pasta, cut into Papardelle, a pasta between 3/4" and 1" in width. To save time, we bought an alfredo sauce from Dave's. Not counting time to bring the pasta water to a boil (which doesn't count because there is no need to watch the pot), it took about five minutes to cook dinner. The black pepper papardelle was delicious and perfectly al dente. Dried pasta is no comparison. The alfredo sauce was acceptable but nothing special; if you have time I would recommend making your own. In a restaurant, this entree for two would cost at least $30; we had it for $6.50. Our bottle of wine at home avoided the restaurant markup.

The only flaw was that the generic frozen peas we had on the side were mushy and shrivelled. The lesson is never to buy generic frozen vegetables; the brand names really are worth the extra money.

read full post ...