Italian Cooking - How to Make an Italian Meal in a Short Time

Italian cuisine is considered to be one of the best in the world. Yet it is not so difficult to cook Italian style. Of course there are dishes which require some work but many dishes are basically simple and can be made quickly without a big effort.
I mentioned this in another article (Italian cooking, what makes the difference) you do not need tons of different ingredients.
Stick to few but high quality ingredients instead.
Don't use processed or instant "food". Try to get fresh organic vegetables and meat (if you can from local producers).
In Italy people have still strong links to rural live, even those who live in big cities like Rome or Milan.
Somehow everybody seems to have a patch of land to grow something. Those who don't, have at least some relative providing them with quality olive oil, good wine, fresh vegetables or whatever you can image...
Food is a main issue among Italians. They talk about it all the time and though for me as German sometimes this is funny, I think we can learn a lot from their way of thinking.
Actually Italians are very aware of what they eat and they have an expertise trained by years of practice. They usually can tell whether food is good quality and whether something tastes like it should.
The good news is you can learn this as well. It is not so hard to do.
The first "secret" is to switch to fresh food of the season instead of instant food from the package, filled with all kind of chemicals.
Once you have tasted the difference between let's say a real ripe tomato and some watery tasteless something which accidentally looks similar to a tomato, you are not likely to eat junk anymore. You simply are not willing to eat something of low quality.
The second and probably the main "secret" is to keep the cooking simple and not to destroy the good taste of each ingredient by adding too much different flavours.
So how do we start?
Of course there are lots of recipes but let's start with a basic recipe, a quick pasta dish with a vegetable sauce.
While you boil water together with a tea-spoon full of salt, you chop the vegetables. This could be egg plants, bell peppers, cauliflower, broccoli or zucchini. Try to get whatever is available fresh and ripe at the season (normally that also means that it is not too expensive).
Keep in mind not to use two dozen different types of vegetables, just stick to a few.
Chop also some garlic and maybe an onion.
Pour quality extra virgin olive oil in a pan and add the vegetables. Don't heat the oil before adding them. Being heated together with the oil the vegetables suck some of the oil thus improving their flavour.
Garlic is done quickly so add it only after a while to avoid it getting burned (if you have only zucchini which are also fairly soft you can add it at the same time)
Let it simmer for a while on low heat. If you prefer to have the vegetables more crunchy switch the hearth off a little earlier
If you want a more liquid sauce you might add tomato sauce and pulp and let everything simmer together a little longer.
In the meantime the water should be boiling and you can pour the noodles.
Cook the pasta "al dente" (with a bite), never soft and pulpy.
On the packages of the noodles normally there is stamped an average time for the cooking. See this as a recommendation rather than a 100% guaranteed cooking time. Taste the noodles once in a while to see if they are done.
Learn to trust your own judgment rather than obeying a recipe to the very last paragraph.
Once the pasta is "al dente" pour it into a sieve and let the cooking water drip down.
If your sauce is not liquid enough, safe some of the cooking water and mix it with the sauce. Keep in mind though that Italians hardly ever drown their pasta in sauce.
That's it. You might still add some salt and pepper to the sauce, but the flavour of the olive oil and the vegetables already have done a big part of the seasoning.
Add ground Parmesan or Pecorino cheese and you have a perfect meal. Each of the ingredients is tasty and has a valour of its own. You don't need more.
You could prepare this dish (unless you cook for an entire football team) within twenty minutes.