I have a girl crush and her name is Nadiya Hussain. I just discovered her new cooking show on Netflix. She focuses on easy kitchen hacks for prepping gourmet meals on a time crunch. To top it off her kitchen and wardrobe are fabulous. I love a woman who loves color. Nadiya has given me inspiration today to turn my last minute dinner into a colorful feast.
Nadiya did a spin on pasta sauce so I took her recipe and paired in down a bit to meet the needs of all of my eaters. My daughter is now 10 months old and enjoys feeding herself when she can. She gets so excited by orange and red food that she lets out the funniest giggle that is akin to Winnie the Poo when he sees honey. I chose ditalini pasta as a quick boiling pasta that she can easily grasp and chew.
Instead of using a food processor to mix my pasta sauce I prefer to use my Ninja Nutri Pro Compact Blender. With only the cup and the blade, the Ninja is a snap to clean and it can blend up to 20 oz which was plenty for 4 people with some sauce left over.
I used one peeled and quartered beet that I nuked for 2 minutes, one can of whole tomatoes, three table spoons of ricotta, two teaspoons of basil, a generous shower of garlic, a teaspoon of table salt, and two teaspoons of paprika. This blends all together in the Ninja for less than a minute. For an added kick I like to add sriracha sauce. Of course I’m not going to give a baby sriracha. I’ll save that for when she turns two.
As a second main dish I served my first faux turkey. I did not mean to purchase this. Funny enough. I didn’t notice the apostrophe in the “Tur’key” when I placed it in my Amazon cart. My family and I were pleasantly surprised with these juicy cutlets. About 10 minutes in the broiler and it was done in tandem with the sauce and the noodles. Baby girl found the bite sized tur’key pieces acceptable as well. Winner, winner, tur’key dinner!
This pairs nicely with the Ballard Road Pinot Noir Rose and continues the pink theme. What kind of colorful food are you dreaming up?
Jessica: I love this recipe! I am so happy that you found this idea of pink pasta!!