Pasta + Noodles

Fried zucchini, sweet shrimp, and briny clams come together in this coastal Italian pasta — a dish that tastes like a trip to the Amalfi Coast!

Every bite of this one-layer lasagna is loaded with hearty tomato meat sauce, melty cheese and crispy, golden edges that everyone loves. And without the tedious layering, this is so much faster and easier to make. It’s a definite win-win.

Juicy bites of chicken, tender-crisp broccoli, creamy Alfredo sauce, and little hits of salty bacon goes sooo well together. Pasta shells compliment with just the perfect mouthfeel in every bite.

This Butter Shoyu Mushroom Pasta brings together earthy mushrooms with the richness of butter and umami of soy sauce. Sweet peas give little bursts of sweetness as a perfect counterbalance in every bite. One pan, a handful of ingredients, less than 30 minutes — this is my kinda pasta!

This Dill Pickle Bacon Pasta Salad is a flavour-packed summer main or anytime side dish — combining crunchy dill pickles, smokey bacon bits and a creamy pickle brine dressing tossed with tender pasta. It’s always a winner with my people and at every gathering!

This quick-cooking TOMATO PRAWN WAFU PASTA is a Japanese-style pasta recipe that marries a simple Italian fresh tomato sauce and elements of distinctly Japanese flavours in the use of soy sauce, dashi powder (optional but easy to use — read recipe note), fresh shiso leaves and shredded nori for garnish. The best of both worlds!

This Scallion Noodle Soup is an easy noodle meal with a tasty pork topping in a rich, peanut butter scallion soup that will have you slurping away in delight. It is basically an amalgamation of my dad’s scallion soup noodles and Dan Dan Mein. Or, two of my favourite noodle dishes in one! 

This deeply satisfying Japanese Curry Udon (Kare Udon) has a mild, slightly sweet Japanese-style curry sauce that is dialled just so — at a viscosity somewhere between sauce and broth — to enrobe every chewy udon strand for the perfect bite.

This EASY ONE-POT CHINESE NOODLE SOUP is the answer when you need a nourishing and soul-soothing meal that requires hardly any cooking and is done in 20 minutes. Literally, the only skill needed is the ability to throw everything into a pot and boil them!

Ketchup hits so many of our taste senses: sweet, tangy and umami. In Japanese SPAGHETTI NAPOLITAN (aka Japanese Ketchup Pasta), it is cooked with smokey bacon, earthy mushrooms, sweet bell peppers and onions in this unique pasta dish. Unique to the Western palate, I mean. This isn’t the ketchup pasta you give a picky toddler and it certainly isn’t a pasta you’ll find at an Italian restaurant. It sounds sacrilegious but don’t knock it til you try it!

Bouncy, thick noodles stir-fried with shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, cabbage, carrots and scallions in a very slurpable, savoury sauce. It’s a 20-minute meal that everyone should have in their weeknight repertoire.

This SIMPLE KALE AND SAUSAGE PASTA is a perfect back pocket recipe to make on busy weeknights, involving only 6 ingredients but always super tasty. My biggest tips for this dish is using quality sausages and taking the time to brown the tomato paste to max out its umami.

This is one of the easiest pastas you’ll ever make. In basically the same amount of time to cook the pasta, you can make the sauce. Then toss the sauce with the cooked pasta plus handfuls of baby spinach to wilt, and finish it with grated Pecorino Romano and dried chili pepper flakes. That is it. DINNER is served.

This EASY CHINESE TOMATO EGG NOODLES is a dish you should most definitely have in your weeknight arsenal. It’s so quick and easy to prepare, and satisfying to eat. Summer tomatoes are glorious in this tomato-forward dish. But honestly I make this all year round because it is such a no-fuss meal I can throw together in 15 minutes. We all need more of those, am I right?

Refreshing and delicious recipe featuring bouncy noodles loaded with a variety of crisp veggies and shredded chicken, all tossed in a Chinese-style creamy, savoury, spicy and tangy peanut butter sauce.

Are you Team White Sauce or Team Red Sauce? Honestly, I have been Team Red all the way, all my life. BUT, this dreamy creamy Springtime White Lasagna almost made me second guess my lifelong allegiance. Plus, I tricked my whole family into eating THREE whole different kinds of green vegetables in ONE meal because of this luscious, roasted garlic cream sauce. I said roasted garlic cream sauce. I just wanted to make sure you read that. 😉 Can you even imagine??! It’s definitely kinda magical.

All it took was a delicious cookie. The kind that is hearty and chunky with all my favourite things like seeds and cacao nibs and cranberries and goji berries and tahini (aka my favourite butter of all time until infinity). The kind that promises to be hearty, healthy AND delicious, and actually delivers on that promise. It’s no wonder that I fell in love with it and have made the recipe more than half a dozen times. And in falling in love with the cookie, I discovered and also fell a little bit in love (not in a creepy stalker way … in a respectful admiration type of way) with its creators, Sarah Grossman and Tamara Green, the duo behind Living Kitchen Wellness blog and now their debut cookbook, The Living Kitchen Cookbook, Healing Recipes to Support Your During Cancer Treatment and Recovery.

Autumn seems to be everybody’s favorite season, doesn’t it? We have long Winters here and some of the allure of Autumn, for me anyways, is how fleeting it is before it gives way to the bitter cold. Ugh, I hate the cold. Apart from that, there is something almost ineffable about the beauty of Autumn. The cool, crisp air. The scent of earthiness and wood-burning fires. Leaves in the most splendid array of rich, vibrant colors. ASMR-inducing crunch-crunch-crunch of fallen, dry leaves underfoot. And as for taste, we crave the return of comfort foods after a summer of lighter fare. Foods that feel like a cozy hug for a hungry tummy, like this Lobster and Truffle Oil Mac + Cheese with Crunchy Chickpea Crumbs.

I am super excited to share this recipe as a follow-up to last week's Everyday Veggie-Loaded Ragu share.  For forever, it was a no-brainer to make a lasagna later the same week I make up a big batch of my go-to ragu.  I literally don't know a single person who doesn't like lasagna, do you?  But when we began limiting dairy and gluten consumption (among other things) at the end of 2016, it seemed our lasagna days were over.  Bye bye.

Or so I thought.

Does the internet really need another 'spaghetti sauce' recipe? For a year and half since I started this blog, the answer to myself was consistently NO. Yet here it is.

Ever since my family moved to a diet with limited dairy, my girls have been begging for mac & cheese.  This is a dairy-free version which satisfies all the cravings for the real thing.  They love it so much I literally have to cut them off before they gorge themselves silly on it.  

Beef Stroganoff is a Russian dish and I'll be the first to admit to know nothing about Russian cuisine or whether my version is authentic.  Probably isn't?  I use flank steak in mine which deviates from the sirloin, tenderloin or chuck I typically see in recipes. After having tried all of those cuts for Stroganoff at some point in the past, I stand by flank steak as the ideal cut to use in this recipe.  When sliced uber thin, the melt-in-your-mouth flank pieces are at harmony with the sauteed soft mushrooms and tender egg noodles.      

JAPANESE COLD SUMMER NOODLES, or HIYASHI CHUKA in Japanese, is a cold ramen dish made with fresh ramen noodles topped with a variety of toppings dressed in an easy sweet and tangy soy based sauce. It is one of the tastiest and most refreshing meals to enjoy during the hot summer months!