I love pasta. And it is apparent considering that I try more pasta recipes than any other type of food. Pasta is such a big deal to me that more than once I have been asked if I am of Italian decent (I am not). I tried 10 new pasta recipes in 2012, four of which were just OK, two were pretty good (*) and the rest were YUM (**).
I'll just briefly mention the OK recipes in this post and as always provide the link to the recipe for those that might find these recipes to be more appealing to their tastes than they were to mine.
Whole Wheat Pasta with Sausage, Leeks, and Fontina came from Cooking Light magazine. I did not use whole wheat pasta but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. This was my first time using Savoy Cabbage which I actually really liked (I used a good portion of that head of cabbage in my jalapeno cole slaw recipe and it was a huge hit). What I disliked about this pasta recipe is that I had problems getting the cheese to incorporate into the dish so the textures were a bit off for me. Brad really liked it but I didn't think it was tasty enough to justify the work involved.
Broken Lasagna with Zucchini Tomato Sauce came from Food Network magazine. I thought this would be a great way to use zucchini when all the gardeners start passing along large quantities of this prolific veggie. And I also thought it would be a great way to use up leftover lasagna pasta, especially those broken pieces in every box. My main issue with this recipe is that I simply do not care for sauce recipes that leave cherry tomatoes basically whole in the final dish. But I actually kept this recipe in my files to try again. I think the flavors make it worth trying to tweak the sauce and I probably will repeat with diced tomatoes.
Chicken Spinach Pasta Casserole was another just okay recipe and in fact I cannot even recall where I got the recipe or enough details to be able to search for it online.
The final okay recipe for me Macaroni Au Gratin came from the book Chefs of the Triangle: Their Lives, Recipes and Restaurants by Ann Prospero. This is a really neat book about the local chefs in this area and most of the segments in the book provide some recipes from the chefs. I attempted to make Ashley Christensen's recipe from Poole's Diner having never actually eaten at this restaurant but having enjoyed her food at two other of her restaurants. To be clear, this is not the recipe for the fantastic custard version of mac and cheese she serves at Beasley's (oh to have that recipe!). The flavors of this dish were very good but it has that somewhat grainy texture that old fashioned mac and cheese recipes have. Many people love this type of dish but I prefer creamier versions and in particular am not a fan of crunchy textures such as toasted breadcrumbs or broiled cheese on top of my mac and cheese.
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