Tortellini, Hold The Tomato Sauce

So I've never been a big fan of pasta. Sure, as a kid (and rather poor college student) I ate the quintessential mac and cheese from a box or the ever popular spaghetti with meat sauce, but as an adult and cooking for myself, I rarely fix pasta dishes. Nothing against them... they just don't trip my trigger as a rule. So saying, every once in a while, I'll be in the grocery store and something in the fresh pasta section will catch my eye. Tonight, that was a very lovely 3 cheese, whole grain tortellini... and yes, it really was whole grain... even if you were blind and couldn't see the difference (visually) in color and texture, all you had to do was read the ingredient list/nutrition label. So I bought them to fix for dinner tonight and that brings to me to my other issue with pasta: What, if anything, do you make for a sauce? Maybe this is the core issue of me and pasta never developing that All American love affair the rest of the country seems to have with all things Italian, but I'm not that fond of tomato sauce. I love tomatoes, I love tomato soup. I just don't want tomatoes in sauce form anywhere near my pizza (don't even get me started!) or on the rare bowl of pasta I might eat. So. How to serve my fresh tortellini? Well, this is what I ended up doing:

Ingredients:

fresh tortellini (of course, any pasta will do here)

olive oil (extra virgin really is best here)

ricotta cheese (I usually have a carton of the part-skim kind in the fridge... really, it's very versatile!)

spinach

sun dried tomatoes

fresh basil, torn

salt and pepper to taste

Easy enough, cook the pasta according to package instructions (fresh is always a faster cook time as opposed to dry). Meanwhile, in a serving bowl, combine 1-2 Tbs. of ricotta cheese, 1 tsp. of olive oil, salt, and pepper. I like to dip out the pasta with a slotted spoon instead of draining it altogether in a colander because (1) fewer dishes to clean, and (2) you get some of the salty/starchy cooking water mixed in with the ricotta which helps to loosen it up as well as help it to stick to the pasta and create a sauce. Finish with the spinach (it'll wilt once it hits the hot pasta), sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil. If you happen to have a lemon just lying around, go ahead and zest a little bit on top of the pasta and maybe a pinch of red pepper flakes... or not. It's up to you... like I said, this was just my once in a blue moon version of a pasta dinner.

Enjoy!