Use your noodle

Perhaps weather extremes have triggered comfort food cravings, or maybe it’s just because pasta is delicious, but something has prompted a flood of pasta posts on news feeds everywhere. Food52, in collaboration with Mario Batali’s How To Tuesdays, recently demonstrated how to make garganelli pasta. Garganelli is rustic pasta that resembles a cross between penne and tagliatelle, and appears sublimely simple to make.

Saveur also has noodle on the brain with 25 Perfect Creamy Pastas. Rich, creamy pasta dishes are a wonderful cold weather comfort food, especially when you’ve run out of new soup ideas. But of course you can also use pasta in soups! Saveur doubles down on pasta with a Chinese noodle soup with homemade shiitake broth. The Cooking Channel keeps it more traditional with “Suped-Up” chicken noodle soup. 

Food & Wine has also jumped on the pasta bandwagon with its Winter Vegetable Pasta with Dolcetto. Unlike the decadence of Saveur’s pastas, this one uses whole wheat pasta, mushrooms, parsnips, and cabbage to make a hearty yet healthy dish. Since I don’t shy away from either carbs or calories, one of my personal favorites is La Cucina Italiana’s spaghetti scented with orange (spaghetti all’aroma di arancia), pictured above.

But what if you are not freezing but instead sweltering in an epic heat wave? Pasta is perfect hot-weather food too. Saveur complements their creamy pastas with a compilation of 14 summer pasta dishes. Serious Eats features 20 light pasta recipes perfect for warm weather, and Food52, not to be outdone, offers 21 delicious summer pasta recipes. So whatever the weather or the mood, pasta seems perfect.

Photo by Darcie Boschee