Ok. I never thought that the day would come when I would sing the praises of a rice noodle. Let alone consider it a valid, gluten-free alternative to pasta. But I’ve come to understand and love the little blighters.

In olden times (that is until about 4 months ago) I thought I couldn’t live without pasta; then I tried - and discovered how much better I felt. My body certainly is a happier creature on rice noodles.

But pasta is a fantastic vehicle for carrying flavours, and rice noodles, truth to tell, are not. Still rice noodles have the edge in that you can get them from packet to table, sauced, within about 15 minutes flat.

I will publish some recipes which other people have provided. Most of these dishes begin with onion, garlic, celery, and bell pepper. New Orleans Cooks like my mother, grandmother and wife, and of course myself use plenty of these ingredients. I don’t understand how anyone can cook without starting with these as staples.

This is a creole pasta dish that my wife makes all the time. Crawfish are seasonal down south but there is an abundance of frozen crawfish tails sold in most stores that you can buy year round.

Have you ever wondered how a restaurant can get a dish of pasta to your table in about four minutes when you know it takes ten minutes just to cook the pasta? Does the water on their stoves boil at a higher temperature than the water on yours? Do they know a trick that you don’t? As a matter of fact, they do.

They parboil, or partially pre-cook their pasta; so when an order comes in to the kitchen, a cook can turn out a dish of perfectly ‘al dente’ pasta in a minute or two. Pre-cooking is a worthwhile technique for home cooks, because it enables them to pull together a great sit-down meal in practically no time, no matter how busy their day may have been.

Lasagna is an ancient dish and goes back to Biblical times. The pasta and cheese dish is found in many parts of Italy. Some food historians think Italian housewives invented the dish to use leftover pasta and sauce. According to “The Cooking of Italy,” a Time-Life Book published in 1968, Italian cooking is not difficult to master and “its diversity is inexhaustible.

Lasagna is one of those diverse recipes. You can make it with ground beef, pork, beef and pork combined, smoked ham, cream sauce, meat and cream sauce, and tomato sauce. Many years ago I was invited to a friend’s house for lasagna. “My lasagna is different,” she explained, “and has a layer of spinach.” I like the spinach addition so much I often add it to my homemade lasagna.

Have you ever thought about making your own homemade pasta from scratch. No, I don’t mean the whole dish. I mean the actual pasta noodles. Oh, I know. Why bother with all of that when you can just buy a package of dried noodles in the store and spend time on the important part–the sauce.

How many of us have spent hours next to a beautiful, finely manicured pot of bubbling goodness only to dump it on some old dried out noodles that have been sitting on the store shelf for a year. I know, the store bought stuff has always tasted pretty good in the past. I think most of us wouldn’t even think of making our own because we’ve grown accustomed to just grabbing a package of noodles and the stuff to make a sauce, and we’re on our way.

Yes! IF it’s whole grain pasta cooked al dente (firm, not soft).

Whole grain al dente pasta causes a lower glycemic response than soft cooked refined white pasta. Lower glycemic foods are more slowly absorbed into the bloodstream and don’t create a quick blood sugar rise. This slower absorption helps protect against insulin resistance (a precursor of type 2 diabetes) and metabolic syndrome (a predictor of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease).

In one recent study, published in Diabetes Care, people who ate more whole grains had 37% less prevalence of metabolic syndrome than those who ate processed refined grains. They also had lower levels of protective HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower blood pressure and less risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Ingredients:

½ cup sun dried tomatoes (tomato confit)

2 cups fresh tomato sauce (recipe follows)

10 fresh basil leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

To cook the pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until
aldente. Strain.

To Serve:


In a large sauté pan, bring the tomato sauce and the sun dried tomatoes to a boil, add the pasta and toss to combine. Add the fresh basil and serve immediately.

For the tomato sauce:


Ingredients:


20 plum tomatoes, peeled and seeded

½ cup dry white wine

2 cloves garlic, finely sliced

2½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

I really enjoy eating at nice restaurants. Not because I don’t enjoy cooking, but more to the point, I enjoy good food. I was working in a small Oregon town for a while and found myself hard pressed for someplace really good to eat. There were plenty of restaurants in town, just very few with food I would consider really delicious. This same situation can be found in many small towns all over America.

Myrtle Beach is lucky the Toniolo family picked our area for the second location of their Italian restaurant called Stefano’s Cucina Rustica. They’ve owned the first location of the same name in Florence for 19 years.

The owners are Steve and Anna Toniolo, and their 23-year-old son, Steve, is the general manager of the new eatery, which is in Carolina Forest. Steve is a recent college grad with a business degree.

Stefano’s has a warm décor rich with colors of a Tuscan sunset: umber, sienna, misty green. Low metal ceiling fans and lights have a terra cotta hue, and arches that peek into the kitchen lend an old-world air. Classic Italian music plays, and it was the first time I heard “Volare” in Italian.