Better than Bertolli

Here is your dilemma: You have no oven and two adults with adult tastes to feed. All you have is an electric skillet, toaster and microwave at hand. Kids can be satisfied by pretty simple fare. While adults can too, sometimes adults want something different. Something with complexity. When we first disconnected the oven, we were unsure what exactly our capabilities would be. A lack of confidence led me to the frozen entree section of the local supermarket. There are some interesting temptations there nowadays: pasta with mature ingredients such as roasted vegetables and asparagus;  sophisticated twists on old standbys like garlic mashed potatoes and pre-seasoned green beans; throw-in-the-pan-and-simmer entrees with ingredient-intensive codenames:  Bolognese, for instance, and Pomodoro.

Though some of these dishes meet or exceed my expectations (which, for frozen versions of grown-up food, are generally pretty low), the nutrition information is generally dismaying, especially when it comes to sugar and salt. When a food on its own lacks distinctive flavors it its own, makers of processed foods add these two agents to stand in place of what ought to be just good flavor. When we faced our oven-less challenges, it was tempting to just call it a day and give in to the sodium pushers since anything involving more than one pot gets complicated quickly when there is only one. But we persevered; we love natural flavors (who doesn't?) and now have a bounty of tomatoes and fresh herbs to utilize. Now that we have logged many hours pushing our electric skillet to the max, we have a pretty bulletproof method for preparing one pot meals with a minimum of fuss and maximum flavor enjoyment. Take, for instance, last night's dinner, store-bought "fresh" fettuccini (pretty good stuff, really) tossed with shrimp, fresh tomatoes, herbs and cream.

Abbey is fully responsible for this inspiration, and it is fabulous. We boiled the shrimp for a few minutes in the pot, dumped it out and drained it, then got to peeling it while the pasta cooked in the pan. (next time we are going to try both together for the sake of water economy and to increase the shrimpy goodness.) The pasta was drained and put back in a dry pan with a mix of garden-fresh plum and grape tomatoes, halved, and 3/4 cup of heavy cream. as the tomatoes softened, the cream thickened. Then we tossed in some frozen peas. But the real genius of this dish was Abbey's simple mix of tarragon and shredded basil, both from the garden. The mix of the spicy basil and anise-y tarragon was a totally new sensation to me, and I plan to mix those together in something again,very soon. in the end we added a small amount of salt and cracked pepper and some shaved parmagiano. It was much more interesting than any one-pot frozen pasta dish, and much healthier, since we controlled the sodium content. It's a win-win.