I’ve never done the one-event pasta thing, cooking the dry pasta in with the rest of the ingredients, so this was a first for me in a couple of ways. I should have trusted the recipe I started with on the water. It didn’t look like enough, so I added more. In addition, I didn’t have a lot of the ingredients called for in the starting recipe, so this was basically free-form. I’ll tell you what I did, and I’ll tell you what I’d do differently.
MEXICAN DUTCH OVEN PASTA
- Black beans, dried, 1/3 cup
- Frozen corn, 1 cup
- Plum tomato, 1 large, petite diced (about 1 cup)
- Red bell pepper, 1/2, petite diced
- Red onion, 1/4 large, diced
- Whole wheat rotini, half of a 13.2 oz. box (probably 1+ cup)
- Jalapeno, 1 TB minced
- Hot chili powder, 1 tsp.
- Salt, 1 tsp.
- Tomato paste, 2 TB.
- Water, 2 cups
So as you see, I put all the ingredients right into the pots except the tomato paste and water. Then I stirred all together in the water, put the lid on, and simmered it for about 15 minutes until the pasta was done.
As I said, I added extra water – 2 cups would have been about right. Since it was a little too much liquid, I added the tomato paste so it would be a bit saucier. The jalapeno and chili powder were a substitute for some ingredients I didn’t have. It was good for me but too spicy for more tender tastebuds.
So here’s what I’ll do next time: stick with the two cups of water. Leave out the jalapeno and chili powder and add some chipotle in Adobo sauce. I might even wait until it’s finished cooking on that chipotle and try adding it to some Hamilton Creek Just Mayo and adding that sauce to the dish. Yes, I think I’d like it that way.
Love this cast iron cooking. I’ve had one 10″ skillet for, oh, 40 years that I use all the time, but my Dutch oven lets me do lots of things I couldn’t do before.