If One Ina Garten Pasta Dish Should Be Added To Your Weeknight Rotation, It's This One

On a busy weeknight, dinner is chaotic in many households. After work, parents may have 20 to 30 minutes, tops, to get a meal together that everyone — mom, dad, toddlers, teenagers, and babies — can enjoy. Some nights that could mean multiple dishes, but on the nights home cooks can pull off one meal to rule them all, there's a feeling of true, unbridled accomplishment. Ina Garten's broccoli and bowties pasta dish has become one of those winning meals for many.

Though it's not quite a one-pot dish, Garten's recipe couldn't be simpler. Get a pot of salted water boiling and throw in your chopped broccoli for a few minutes until it's bright green. Remove and put aside, then cook your bowtie pasta in the same pot. While that cooks, get together a simple pan sauce of toasted pine nuts, good-quality olive oil, butter, minced garlic, and fresh lemon juice. Once the pasta is done, toss everything together and top with a healthy amount of parmesan cheese and black pepper. It's easy, it's delicious, and it's endlessly adaptable.

If you're short on broccoli or broccolini (there is a difference but both can work here), or your 3-year-old dictates all meals and, well, broccoli ain't happening, there's good news. Ina Garten's recipe is endlessly adaptable, and all sorts of other vegetables can be quickly and easily subbed in if the cruciferous trees are benched. Since the broccoli is quickly cooked in boiling water, you can replace them with any vegetable that can get the same treatment. Inch-long pieces of perfect springtime asparagus would be lovely here with their crunch and same spring green color as the broccoli. You could also try cleaned and prepped Brussels sprouts, which, when quartered, should take about the same amount of time to cook as the broccoli would.

Maybe your kids — or you — aren't into the green veggie thing. That's okay. Try crisp kohlrabi, a sort of wild cabbage-meets-turnip vegetable. Kohlrabi is dense, so it may take a bit longer to cook in the salted, boiling water, but the result is a lovely, crunchy bite amongst a sea of buttery, lemony noodles. Last, you can, of course, opt for the ever-beloved carrot; coins or crinkle-cut pieces of the bright orange root veggie are perfect, either on their own or with the addition of fresh spring peas.