Combining Two Pasta Shapes in One Dish

I thought last night’s dinner for eight would be easy to put together.  I had a one-pound box of rotini, a curly pasta that would cook up nicely and go well with marinara sauce.  The table was set, and the water was boiling.  That’s when I picked up the rotini and noticed that the box was half-empty.

Uh oh.  No time to run to the store.  What other pastas did I have in the cupboard?  Spaghetti wouldn’t work.  I rooted around and found a half-full bag of farfalle (also known as bow tie pasta).  I checked the cooking time—11 minutes for the rotini and 12 minutes for the farfalle.  I dumped both into the boiling water, set the timer for 11 minutes and crossed my fingers.

The farfalle needed an extra minute, and luckily the rotini didn’t mind.

I drained all the noodles, dumped them back in the cooking pot and added a large jar of marinara sauce.  The dish looked exotic—just what I wanted on a chilly summer night.

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