Pasta With Fresh Tomato Sauce and Ricotta

The sauce is splendid, as is the whole dish. Until I read some of the comments below, however, I had NO idea "we" were supposed to frown on farfalle/bowties--or that they had the remotest connection to Betty Crocker recipes! Oddio--where will our snobbery take us next?!

Love pasta and stopped making it a couple of years ago to cut down on white carbs. Did not like whole wheat at all. Few months ago discovered brown rice and quinoa pasta at Trader Joe's. Back to loving and eating a favorite food! It's delicious...

Oh, Brian, you've been missing out if you're not using bow ties. The Silver Spoon pasta book has a whole chapter for them, Marcella Hazan used them, a favorite (Italian) pasta cookbook I bought in Florence has 5 recipes for them (with lemon, with mushrooms and cheese, with scallops and asparagus) and hey, what's wrong with Betty Crocker anyway. I love how the bows capture the sauce plus the little knob in the center of the bow always stays just a bit more al dente and chewy.

I like to keep the carbs low, too. So in this dish I used half linguine and half spiralized zucchini. I placed the raw, spiralized zucchini in my colandar first, poured the cooked pasta with its hot water on top of it, and drained both together. Then I swirled them together in the buttered pan. That method cooked the zucchini just enough, without overcooking it.

As an Italian growing up, we called it bow tie. Nothing wrong with that and I come from a very Italian family.

Call it farfalle and maybe you will feel different.

Try instead reducing the sauce at high heat, it should take less than 10 min., and preserves the fresh character of the tomatoes.

After reading all the comments I did what I usually do, which is chop up the tomatoes and put them in the pan (including seeds and skin) with the other ingredients. I cooked it hard for about 20 mins and then put the whole thing through the food mill. Then I reduced it some more. It was excellent.

Lots of people still do! It's an excellent shape for sauce to collect in the tufts of the pasta. Plus it looks pretty.

I do! Am I not supposed to? Sorry, I never got the memo.

In my humble opinion, much of Italian cooking is graced with personal tweaks. I LOVE these recipes from NYTimes because they provide endless inspiration and guidance. It's the best of both worlds for me...I'm a devoted Foodie and cook and there is always something to learn. Rock on you NYTimes chefs...and hoping my tomatoes will be good enough for this recipe but living in Western Washington makes growing great tomatoes tricky. But onward and ever hopeful!

you can make your own, it's fairly easy or so i've heard. at my regular grocery store the only ricotta they have is generic and one name brand that i would use in stuffed shells or lasagna but not something like this. so, i turn to whole foods. usually by the cheese counter they have some locally made ricotta. there is totally a difference in taste in texture. the few times i've bought it i've had to resist eating half the container with a spoon :)

Honestly making your own ricotta is so easy I don't think I'll ever buy it again. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/homemade-ricotta-recipe-1923290

yes, needed at least 30 to 45 minutes to get tomato sauce to the right consistency. Great sauce, one of the very best - "fresh from the garden" tasting.

You want to replace the creaminess of the ricotta and the nuttiness/sharpness of the pecorino, so perhaps Greek yogurt instead of ricotta (seasoned with a little olive oil, salt & pepper) and toasted pistachio nuts or breadcrumbs.