When I was a young child, I would stand on my tiptoes and watch my dad whip salt onto a piece of steak and place it onto a roaring cast-iron pan bare-handed. Even after my dad shooed me away from the kitchen, I watched from the doorway. After cooking for a few years myself, I’ve realized cooking is meditative. It can be stressful for some people, but I think of it as something that needs to be done  I need to eat, so why not enjoy every second of preparing it? Touching and tasting every ingredient going into my food gives me peace of mind. These recipes I will be sharing for the rest of the semester will be either by me or someone I love. I will try to vary difficulty and dietary restrictions from week to week. This week’s recipe is avocado arugula pasta. It was something my mom would make my brother and me often in the summer, so eating it in the winter always warms me up.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. penne or linguine

1 1/2 cups arugula

1 avocado

A few sprigs of basil

1 clove of garlic

1 lime, freshly squeezed

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Instructions:

1. Put your water to boil. Add salt until the water is the salinity of the ocean (this will help flavor the pasta so you don’t have to add too much salt to the sauce). Add pasta.

2. As you add the pasta to the water, you can start the sauce. Throw the arugula, avocado, basil, garlic, lime juice and a bit of salt and pepper into a food processor or blender and purée.

3. Slowly add about 1/4 cup of olive oil while puréeing to emulsify the mixture.

4. Drain your pasta but add a few spoonfuls of the pasta water to the sauce and mix. This will add starch to the sauce and help it stick to the pasta. 

5. Pour sauce over the drained pasta and mix until pasta is fully coated.