By The week after my birthday and St. Patrick's Day, which means the neighborhood is recovering from its annual celebration. Southie on March 18th has the specific quality of a party that was excellent and now needs to be cleaned up — there are still green streamers on a few stoops, the corner stores are selling leftover green plastic hats at a discount, and everyone is slightly tired in a way that feels earned. I'm twenty-six years old and three months from getting married and the recovery feels right.
Spring is visible now — not arrived, but clearly on the way. The forsythia in the park has one branch with yellow buds on it, which is either optimistic or delusional, but I choose to read it as optimistic because it's March and you take what you can get. I wore only two layers on Wednesday, which is a milestone.
Work this week included a morning that was hard in a particular way — I had two patients on the same floor at opposite ends of very different trajectories, which is not unusual but which this week arranged itself in a way that required me to hold both things simultaneously without either collapsing the other. This is one of the central skills of oncology nursing: the ability to hold joy and grief in the same morning, in the same hallway, and to give each one what it needs without bleeding them into each other. I am better at this than I used to be. I am still learning.
I made a simple spring-ish pasta this weekend — linguine with lemon and capers and olive oil and a handful of fresh parsley, the kind of food that announces a change in season before the season has officially agreed to change. Sean D. said it tasted like "optimism with pasta," which is not wrong. I'm calling it a March pasta and I will make it every year.
The linguine I described is close enough to this that the recipe I keep coming back to is Tomato Basil Pasta — same spirit, same principle: good olive oil, something bright and acidic, fresh herbs, pasta that doesn’t ask too much of you on a Sunday evening. After a week of holding hard things at work and a neighborhood still stringing up leftover green streamers, I needed food that tasted like a decision to feel better rather than a production. This is that pasta — fast, unambiguous, the kind of thing Sean D. will eat without commentary, which is its own form of praise.
Tomato Basil Pasta
Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 12 oz linguine or spaghetti
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for pasta water
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup fresh basil leaves, roughly torn
- 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for serving
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water before draining.
- Build the sauce. While pasta cooks, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is fragrant and just beginning to turn golden, about 2 minutes. Do not let it brown.
- Add tomatoes. Add cherry tomatoes, salt, and black pepper to the skillet. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes have softened and released their juices, about 5–7 minutes. Use the back of a spoon to crush a few tomatoes and thicken the sauce slightly.
- Toss together. Add the drained pasta directly to the skillet. Toss to coat, adding reserved pasta water a splash at a time until the sauce clings and is slightly glossy. Remove from heat.
- Finish and serve. Stir in lemon juice and half the basil. Divide among bowls, top with Parmesan, remaining basil, and a drizzle of olive oil.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 430 | Protein: 14g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 64g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 420mg