Pasta Vesuviana
By: Vanessa Bonnin
Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 5:39pm

Ingredients




1 pound of your favorite whole grain penne or ziti
8 ounces fresh mozzarella
1 cup fresh chopped basil
1 tablespoon Cold Pressed Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4 organic garlic cloves, chopped
14 ounces diced organic tomatoes
8 ounces organic tomato paste
1 cup water
2 tablespoons organic dried oregano
2 tablespoons organic dried basil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preparation

1 Heat Oil in saucepan on medium heat for 3-4 minutes, add garlic and let brown, stirring occasionally for 4-5 minutes.  Be careful not to burn garlic! 2 Add diced tomatoes, tomato paste, water, oregano, basil, salt and pepper 3 Bring to a boil for 4-5 minutes, reduce heat to low and let simmer for 1-2 hours or as long as you have time for, stirring occasionally. 4 Bring large pot of water to a boil,  add about 1/2 teaspoon sea salt to water right before you put the pasta in.  This helps flavor the pasta.  Add 1 lb of Brown Rice Pasta (you can also use other pastas, just make sure they are whole grain to get the most health benefits).  Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the water as brown rice pasta tends to stick together. 5 Cook for 7-10 minutes until al dente, drain, and add to sauce. 6 While the pasta is cooking, cut up 8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese into cubes.  Once you add the pasta to the sauce, keep heat on low, add the mozzarella cheese to the pasta and gently fold in until melted, about 3-4 minutes.  Be careful not to let it over-melt, it will become too stringy. 7 Serve immediately with a garnish of fresh basil and parmesan cheese!  Enjoy!

About


 Pasta pasta pasta!  I never get sick of it.  I could have pasta everyday of my life for the rest of my life and be happy.    It truly is comfort food to me and I really believe it raises my endorphins.   It just makes my stomach so happy!     Can you believe there was a time when I actually tried to cut this stuff out of my life?  When I tried the Atkins diet during college,  I came home to visit my mom one night and she was eating some sort of pasta dish for dinner.   I was set on following this diet and sat at the dinner table while tears rolled down my cheeks because I couldn’t have any pasta.    Needless to say, she thought I was crazy.  This happened one time before when I had mono and couldn’t swallow anything.  I cried at the breakfast table because I couldn’t eat my usual everything bagel.    You could say I’ve always been a carb lover.  I can’t believe I ever tried to say goodbye to them.
     My whole perspective on carbohydrates changed one summer when I went camping with my sister, Rachel, in Bass River State Forest, one of my favorite places in the state of New Jersey.  I remember complaining to her at our campfire that I couldn’t lose weight and hated having to give up carbs.  She explained to me that if I start replacing refined grains with whole grains that I wouldn’t have to give them up.  She said that a whole grain is like a big log in the campfire, it keeps burning and burning because it has so much to burn (i.e. fiber).  It’s not like refined flour which is more like the little twigs that just burn up right away.   As a result, you don’t get as hungry when you eat whole grains and you get all the additional nutrients that are often stripped away when you eat refined foods.  This was just the example I needed to understand it.    I started learning about grains that had a high fiber content that were not robbed of their valuable nutrients.   I slowly fell in love with so many whole foods, grains, and flours that I had rarely ate before such as quinoa, brown rice, lentils, multi whole grain pastas, buckwheat, kamut, spelt, triticale, oats, and yes even chia seeds (the kind that grow chia pets! they are delicious!) .
     At the moment, I am trying a gluten free diet as I think gluten might be the cause of my extreme fatigue.   If your body is fighting something that it can’t digest properly, it may cause adverse reactions in the body, such as fatigue.     Experimenting with your diet can lead you to understand how your body reacts to certain foods.
     I recently found a really delicious, AFFORDABLE,  organic brown rice pasta from Trader Joe’s.   It’s only $1.99 a lb and is so tasty.   I’ve purchased brown rice pasta from other stores before for a lot more money and it wasn’t half as good as Trader Joe’s brand. 
      Being that I am always up for a great tasting pasta dish, I decided to make Pasta Vesuviana last night. I considered it an homage to my experience living five miles down the road from an active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, and an homage to one of my favorite countries in the world, Italia!   This dish is named after the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, whose eruption destroyed Pompeii in Italy in A.D. 79.  The melted mozzarella and tomato sauce in the pasta resemble lava.  I was actually able to see Mt. Vesuvius from afar when I was in Italy in 2007, it was really cool.
      My mom used to make this dish for my family when we were little and it was always fun to eat.  Beware: melted mozzarella does get stuck in your throat, so make sure you are careful when eating it!  It’s so easy to make and oh so delicious!  Charlie and I ate almost a whole pound of it!   I put a few variations on how my mom used to make it.  I omitted the butter she used and replaced the white pasta with Organic Brown Rice Pasta.
     This dish reminds me of so many wonderful things; my mom, living in Hawaii, traveling through Europe,  and my passion for Italian food and culture.   The flavor combinations in this dish are amazing and it makes me happy every time I eat this.  How can stringy cheesy pasta not make a person happy?   Perhaps the Italians just need to go cook for everyone in the world and we will have world peace.  I think thats the real solution….