Pastina

I have found a new great pasta recipe as well as a fun new pasta. While searching for a dish that uses carrots, I came across Giada's Pastina with Peas and Carrots. This is definitely a recipe I shall add to my recipe collection to make again and again. It has many of the qualities that I look for in a recipe for it to be a regular. It's easy, it's tasty, and it has room for additions and substitutions such as adding blue cheese or substituting broccoli for the peas. Here are the (original) ingredients for this dish.

This recipe was a perfect place for me to try out this new pasta shape that I had come across called ditalini. I found the little, short tubes to be so fun and cute that I had to pick up a box. The ditalini was perfect for this recipe, as first of all, it is a pastina, which literally means, according to wikipedia, "little pasta" (check out these other fun little pasta shapes!), and secondly because the size of the ditalini matched up well with the peas and the diced up carrots and onions which makes you almost want to eat this dish with a spoon versus a fork. It's funny how using a different size, shape, style of pasta can affect how a dish tastes. I find that doing something simple like that of just changing the type of pasta you use in your regular dishes is an easy way to make your dish a little bit different. Well, it's not really the taste that changes, it's mostly just a change in texture, but still that bit of change in texture can make the dish feel not as boring. Now to find in what other dish the ditalini works well in so the ditalini doesn't become boring.

Recipe Link: Pastina with Peas and Carrots