Warped Pasta Prima Vera

While we’re discussing convenience, I’d like to suggest a minor convenience that surprised me by being economical, organic and nutritionally superior to other similar non-organic products. To begin, I want to confess that slow food to me is like crossing starvation with an early death. With the commute, I work from 6 AM to about 5:30 in the evening, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is spend any time in the kitchen. I might tinker around with red beans and rice on an occasional weekend, but I normally rely on restaurant shortcuts and sauces made in the pan; things cooked at high heat for short periods and finished with reduction.

 

So when I get a craving for something more complex, like a pasta dish, I resort to ingredients tossed in a sauté pan, with a bottled marinara added at the last minute. Zucchini, leek, onion, mushrooms and maybe shrimp or sausage for variety, whatever wasn’t eaten earlier, and then a thin layer of marinara with the usual acid aftertaste of these sauces covered over with some ripe cheese. I don’t like most of the sauces, which generally contain too much tomato paste made from unripe tomatoes, and then a clumsy balance of the acid with sugar, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. The Barilla brand comes closest, if you can’t afford the more expensive (and refrigerated) Contadina, but there are a variety of other brands. I look for the ones with recognizable pieces of vegetable floating in a fairly liquid base, and avoid the pureed ones.

 

In my recent comments on prepared organic convenience food, I came across a pasta sauce organic brand called Muir Glen (www.muirglen.com) distributed by Small Planet Foods in Washington.

Believing, as does Foodmuse, that organic tomatoes have the most obvious superiority over their grocery store rivals for taste and texture, this seemed like a good place to see if the superiority would carry over into an organic convenience product. First let me say I was happily surprised to see the organic sauce was the same price as the other recognized brands, like Newman. Next, I discovered from the label that this stuff, with 60 calories per half cup, including only 5 calories from fat overmatched my usual brand, which was 90 calories per half cup, with 25 from fat. The ingredients were almost identical, except for herbs, and the main difference was the amount of sugar and olive oil added. That, and the use of ripe tomatoes in the organic product. This really came through very clearly, that there was less acidic aftertaste from the organic brand.

 

So you’re right, Foodmuse, in that tomatoes are the best place to look to see the superiority of organic farming. I think this shows up, even in a bottled tomato sauce.

Comments

[greensgal]

And, if you like Muir Glen (I especially like their "fire roasted" tomatoes), try some of the bionaturae (http://www.bionaturae.com/story.html) brands from Italy (I know, not local). They don't make pasta sauce, but with a little sauteed garlic and some dried oregano and a splash of red wine, it's a flash to make it. Good quality tomatoes don't require a lot of doctoring to make a fantastic sauce. Their whole grain pasta products are completely superior to anything available from the states. Europe was way ahead of us on organics - but we are catching up fast. The bionaturae whole grain pasta does not have the grainy heaviness of the other brands and makes eating whole grain a total pleasure.