We’ve been battling off a persistent virus for weeks at our house.  Just as we start to feel better, it creeps back with scratchy throats and dull headaches.

What we need now is soup, hot and soothing with chicken broth, lots of vegetables and  a good dose of ginger.  When I spotted this take on won ton soup in Nina Simonds new cookbook, “Simple Asian Food” (Rodale, 2012), I knew I had to make it.

Simonds long has been one of my favorites.  She translates Asian flavors into lively dishes that don’t require a pilgrimage to a distant Asian market to pull off.  She’s also an advocate of healthy eating who sits on the Nutrition Roundtable at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

The new cookbook is filled with tempting dishes, but the soups are most appealing to me at the moment.  I also have my eye on the cinnamon beef noodles and Saigon-style chicken noodle soup, Simond’s simplified variation on pho.

This gingery faux-wonton soup was everything she promises.   Cloud-like pork meatballs, studded with chopped ginger, float in a light chicken broth. Bow-tie noodles stand in for wonton wrappers and a generous portion of chard delivers calcium, iron and vitamin C.  It all comes together much more quickly than you would imagine.  And there’s none of the fuss of filling wontons when you’re not feeling that great anyway.

The only changes I made to her recipe were to increase the amount of pasta a little and use only half of the meatballs.  I froze the rest for a future soup.  A pound of meatballs just felt like too much meat for only six cups of broth.  Alternatively you could increase the broth to 8 cups or more.

Next time, I’d probably make the meatballs a little smaller, too.  But that does take a little more time and effort.

If this soup doesn’t cure what ails you, at least it will ease the suffering.

One of the pitfalls of being a food writer is that terrific dishes far too often fall by the wayside while I’m pursuing new flavors and ingredients.

That was the case with this pasta, which combines some of my favorite Mediterranean flavors.  For years, while I was still working in hard news, this was my go-to pasta dish.  I made it for friends and family alike.  The proportions and techniques were so familiar, I could whip it up without referring to the recipe.

Then I left the city desk, joined the food team and began trying out new recipes every week when I wasn’t reviewing restaurants.  I lost track of this old favorite and my copy of the recipe disappeared.

Not until a longtime friend requested the recipe this summer did I begin to try to recreate it.  I remembered the ingredients, but it took a little fiddling to get the proportions right.

This is still a terrific vegetarian dish with cubes of roasted eggplant contributing meaty substance to a sauce bright with sweet tomatoes, tangy goat cheese and fresh basil. Capers and Kalamata olives add salty accents.

An elegant pasta that tastes just as good warmed up the next day, the whole dish comes together fairly quickly once you’ve cut and roasted the eggplant.

Thank you, Marilyn, for prodding me to bring this pasta back into my repertoire.  Old dishes, like old friends, deserve to be remembered.

“Ramen?” everyone groaned when I brought out the packages of instant noodles on a backpacking trip in Point Reyes last weekend.  The wavy blocks of cheap dried noodles have become such a culinary clichè in the back country that my companions couldn’t believe the food writer would actually serve them.

“Give me a break,” I replied a bit testily. “David Chang likes ramen.  Just wait and see.  It’ll be good.”

Chang, the irreverent chef of Momofuku, so loves ramen in all its forms that he named his celebrated Manhattan restaurant for the Japanese inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando.  The first edition of Chang’s new quarterly, “Lucky Peach,” focuses on ramen from every angle.   He even gets former Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Reichel to confess in print that she used to serve instant ramen noodles all the time to her son and his friends — in her homemade broth, of course.

As I was paging through the magazine the week before the backpacking trip, I chanced upon Chang’s unorthodox technique for cooking the noodles with cheese and black pepper.  He reduces the volume of cooking water, infuses it with the flavors of butter, olive oil and cheese, and then stirs the noodles into the rich broth.  As the noodles cook, they soak up all the rich flavors. (The nasty-tasting seasoning packets are discarded.)

“That’s genius,” I thought, and set about adapting the idea for a quick pasta primavera. I’ve made the dish before with angel hair pasta but the noodles are so fine, they often clump up when the rehydrated vegetables are stirred in.  Ramen solves that problem.

The instant noodles also take care of the issue of what to do with water drained off the pasta when you’re cooking without a sink nearby.  The noodles drink up most of the liquid and what’s left makes a thin sauce.

This dish uses so little liquid that one of my companions was clearly skeptical.  “I don’t think that’s enough water for all those noodles,” she insisted.

Five minutes later, she had to admit she was wrong as she was slurping up chewy, cheesy noodles with a generous portion of peas, corn, carrots, red peppers and tomatoes.

My fellow hikers’ raves more than made up for the earlier razzing.

Multiply this recipe by as many campers as you want to feed.  It will outshine any packaged backpacker dinner you can buy and the ingredients are very lightweight.

There’s only one drawback to this easy dish. Melting the cheese in the liquid creates a sticky glaze that is difficult to get out of the pan.  A handy little nylon pot scraper saves the day.

Even the most enthusiastic cooks face days when 5 p.m. rolls around and they still haven’t the faintest idea what they’re making for dinner.  The refrigerator is bare, there’s no time to go to the store and ordering take-out is not in the budget.

That’s when I turn to the pantry.  Mine always holds at least one package of spaghetti, a can of diced tomatoes and a can of clams (I like Geisha brand) for this simple but satisfying pasta.  Oh yes, there’s always a hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano in the fridge, too.  A head of garlic waits in a terra cotta jar on the counter and a big bottle of extra virgin olive oil stands in the cupboard.  If I’m lucky, there will be fresh Italian parsley in the crisper but it’s not absolutely essential.

The recipe for this emergency dish originally came from an old copy of  “The Romagnoli’s Table” (Little Brown, 1975) that I picked up at a used book store.  Since this was the only recipe that caught my fancy, the book was recycled long ago.  Now, I’ve been making the pasta by rote for so long that I’m not even sure how close it comes to the original anymore.

What I like about this dish is that the sauce comes together in the time it takes to boil the pasta. The bright flavors of the tomato play a pleasing counterpoint to the briny clams and salty parmesan.

Nothing is wasted — the tomato juices and clam juices form the basis of the sauce.  They cook down in a little garlic-infused olive oil before the clams are tossed in at the last minute.  The good news, too, is that clams are listed as a best choice on the Seafood Watch list.

Lately, I’ve been making this dish with bucatini rather than the usual spaghetti or linguine.  The pasta looks like thick strands of spaghetti, but it’s formed like straws with a hole in the center of the strands, and the texture is delightfully chewy.

With a couple of cans in the pantry and this pasta in your repertoire, you never have to worry about what’s for dinner.

Thanksgiving is just days away, yet my thoughts already are turning to leftovers.

The menu for the big day is pretty standard:  Simple roast turkey a la Russ Parson’s Judy bird, decadent mashed potatoes, those sweet potato-stuffed mini pumpkins I wrote about last week, green beans, persimmon salad, fresh cranberry relish, homemade rolls and pumpkin pie from an old “Joy of Cooking” recipe.  It’s a lot of work to pull together, but the basic elements don’t change much from year to year.

When it comes to leftovers, though, innovations are definitely welcome.  Even after the obligatory soup—I’m thinking chili this year—and overstuffed sandwiches on Friday, we usually still have a lot of turkey left in the refrigerator.  And I’d rather be hiking or walking on the beach than spending more time in the kitchen.

By Saturday, I’m looking for an easy, fresh-tasting dish that puts turkey squarely in the background.  This pasta salad fits the bill.

With the gentle texture of orzo pasta and the vivid flavors of curry, chutney and raspberry vinegar, this dish gives turkey a whole new personality.  In fact, you might not even notice it’s part of the mix—which is fine by me. Celery, red bell pepper, scallions and butter lettuce play supporting roles.

This is a refreshing dish that can serve as either a light lunch or the centerpiece of a family supper.  It’s just what I need after the gluttony of the holiday.

If you have Thanksgiving leftover secrets, please share.   We all could use a few new ideas for dealing with the remains of one of our best holidays.

Every time I see a new recipe for  sesame peanut noodles, I feel compelled to try it.  Somewhere out there, I know, is the elusive sauce with the ideal balance of lively spice and creamy texture that turns cold noodles and fresh vegetables into a feast.

Most of the recipes I’ve made, however, tend to turn out bland, stodgy and gloppy.  Once the sauce joins the cooled noodles, it congeals and becomes almost impossible to toss with the pasta.

For years, my best bet was Nina Simonds’ rainbow peanut noodle salad from “Asian Noodles” (Hearst Books, 1997).  It was always a hit at potlucks and summer picnics with its creamy dressing and generous helpings of crisp vegetables, but it lacked the spark I craved.  I wanted the undercurrent of lime and tingle of chile that make Thai cuisine so irresistible.

During an extremely hot spell this month, though, I began experimenting with my own sauce, bumping up the heat with ginger and red chile sauce (I like sriracha in the plastic squeeze bottle with a rooster on it) while introducing the zing of fresh lime juice.  The ingredients are available in most supermarkets.

For the noodles, I’ve taken a tip from Simonds and used linguine or spaghetti rather than the usual Chinese egg noodles.  The pasta is a little firmer and stands up to the heavy sauce without getting soggy.  Whole wheat spaghetti works very well.

I’ve dumped the raw mung bean sprouts typical to most sesame peanut noodle recipes because I don’t like their starchy flavor and introduced a lot of cilantro, which I adore.  If you’re someone for whom cilantro leaves a soapy aftertaste, just substitute parsley.

The vegetables blend better with the noodles if you slice them into thin julienne strips.  The easiest way is to use a special peeler, which produces slender strings of the carrots and cucumbers, but an inexpensive Asian mandoline also does the trick if your knife skills are a little weak.

At last, I have a recipe that satisfies all my cravings.  The search is over.

This was not the greatest tomato season where I live. Until the last couple of weeks, the weather was just too cool for regular size tomatoes to ripen properly.  But the cherry tomatoes have been just fine.

So, more often than not, when I’ve wanted a  quick and easy pasta sauce with the tang of fresh tomatoes this season, I’ve turned to the beautiful little Sweet 100s or orange Sun Golds lined up in baskets at the farmers market.  Not only do they add a bright shot of flavor to every dish, they don’t need chopping or peeling.

For this recipe, I roast the baby tomatoes in plenty of olive oil with slivers of garlic, a dried chile, oregano and chopped parsley until they’re beginning to split and release their juices.  When the weather is as hot as it’s been for the last couple of days, though, I would cook them slowly on top of the stove in a wide skillet.

Any long skinny pasta will do, but I love the chewy snap of the bucatini now available at my local grocery story.  Although bucatini looks like fat spaghetti, the strands are formed with a hole in the center — just like a straw — and seem to suck up any sauce with which they’re tossed.

Curds of salty feta cheese and a shower of shredded basil bring the dish together.  Dinner couldn’t be easier.

If mention of olive oil turns your thoughts to Italy, it’s time to expand your horizons.  Some of the freshest most flavorful olive oil on the market today comes from California.

For more than two decades the state’s  boutique producers of high end oils have been getting all the attention.  One of the most popular and widely distributed, McEvoy Ranch, commands more than $20 for a 12.7 ounce bottle of its  intense, pungent oils from Tuscan varieties of olives.

Now, California is building a reputation for high quality oils delivered at a more modest price, thanks to intensive planting techniques, mechanical harvesting and a proliferation of high tech mills.   Although many may be familiar with the oils from the mammoth California Olive Ranch, with mills in Oroville and Corning, far fewer are likely to recognize the products of the state’s number two producer, Corto Olive.  That’s because most of its oil production is bottled under private labels for the likes of Zabar’s and Sam’s Club.

I chanced upon the Corto label in a Whole Foods store last fall.  The price was so reasonable at $5.99 on special for a half liter bottle (about 17 ounces) that I couldn’t resist.  It even carried a seal from the California Olive Oil Council, which signifies that it’s a true extra virgin olive oil, with minimal acidity, that has been cleared of any defects by an expert tasting panel.  That’s more than you can say for most of the imported olive oil on grocers’ shelves.

The oil wasn’t terribly complex but it delivered fresh olive aroma and taste with a nice little kick and none of the mustiness or off-flavors so common in supermarket oils.  It’s great for everyday cooking and makes a terrific pasta aglio e olio, the traditional Italian dish that draws its flavor from garlic and olive oil.

About a month later, I was lucky enough to tour the Corto plant outside Lodi with a group from the UC Davis Olive Center.  The mill stands in the middle of sprawling olive orchards planted about 700 trees to an acre in hedge rows designed to be harvested mechanically.  The olives go from tree to mill in a matter of hours.  After the vibrant green oil is cold pressed in machinery imported from Italy and Germany, the unfiltered juice is piped into stainless steel tanks for storage until its ready for bottling to order.

Barry Whitlow, the president of Corto Olive, says he has no ambitions to make gourmet olive oil with unique character. He just wants to sell honest and flavorful oil at a competitive price.  “We’re about producing an approachable oil, fruity and fresh,” he says.

Corto now has a permanent place in my pantry.  I pull it out whenever I saute vegetables, brown a piece of meat or make this California-style variation on aglio e olio starring whole wheat spaghetti and green garlic.

Whole grain pasta brings a pleasant, earthy flavor and a little more substance to this simple dish.  Green garlic, an early spring treat which is easily mistaken for scallion until you get a whiff of the lively aroma, is a little brighter and fresher tasting than the usual cloves.   (Mince the white and pale green portions of the stalk.)  Whole cloves are just fine, though, if green garlic is unavailable.

I often use a wok to cook the oil and garlic so I’ll have plenty of room to toss the spaghetti with the sauce.  A pair of short tongs also comes in handy.  You want to make sure every strand is coated.

This dish is perfect for a busy spring weekend when the welcome warmth of the sun and growing hours of daylight keep you out in the garden or on a hiking trail all day. It comes together in no more time than it takes to cook the spaghetti.   Although purists would never add cheese to aglio e olio, I confess that I like to dust it lightly with salty Pecorino Romano, which makes the flavors pop.

For more subtle dishes, I’m likely to reach for Belle Farms extra virgin oil from Watsonville.  Steve and Marguerite Remde produce a lovely Tuscan-style oil from a blend of olives grown on their small farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  It’s a golden, buttery oil with nice fruit and a little peppery bite on the finish—ideal for dressing a salad or drizzling over steamed broccoli.

The Remdes pick their fruit by hand, crush their harvest in Modesto and sell the oil at local wineries and grocery stores.  Marguerite also sells at the Cabrillo College farmers market in Aptos on Saturday mornings.

Oil from the 2009 harvest was just released a couple of weeks ago and I scored a bottle for my kitchen.  At $14 a half liter, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not a huge splurge either.

Life is too short to cook with inferior olive oil.

Life has thrown me a few curve balls in recent days.  One of the most inconvenient was the loss of power, water and access to the files on my desktop computer for nearly a week.

I do have an appetizing food photo to go with this post, truly I do.  Sadly, it’s still locked up on the other computer, though. So I’m going to beg your indulgence and offer this shot of the culprit in all this—the 200-year-old fir tree that decided to depart this life during a blustery storm last week.  It uprooted and fell with a tremendous thud, crushing our water tank, blocking the road and taking down power and cable lines.

Thankfully, I had already worked out this recipe for oricchette with broccoli rabe.   Just thinking about this dish brightens my day.

It’s a variation on the Italian classic and one of the best ways I know to use that leafy vegetable also known as rapini.  The name of the pasta translates to “little ears” and the wilted greens of the sauce cling nicely to the small, cupped shapes.  Penne, ziti or rotelle will do the job nearly as well, however, if you can’t find oricchete at your market.

Despite its name, broccoli rabe is thought to be a relative of the turnip rather than the broccoli most commonly found in the supermarket.  Dark, peppery and a bit bitter, it can be found at farmers markets and specialty grocery stores in the fall and winter months.  Look for bunches with vibrant green leaves, tight florets and slender stalks.  Reject those with yellowing or wilting leaves.

What makes this recipe so delightful is the addition of goat cheese, which brings a luxurious texture to the dish and softens the bite of the bitter greens.  The inspiration comes from Linda Butler,  of Lindencroft Farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, who wrote about her love of broccoli rabe in Saveur magazine this month.  She uses goat cheese in her variation on the traditional recipe.

I’ve also taken a tip from Tuscan cooking and introduced toasted breadcrumbs for more textural interest along with a bit of bacon for a salty, savory note.  It’s not the same as pancetta, it’s true, but it’s readily available and much more economical. Besides, doesn’t bacon make everything better?

This is a great one-dish meal that can be prepared with a minimum of time and only two pans.  It’s comfort food extraordinaire— just what I want when all my best-laid plans start crashing about me.

As summer begins to wind down and the days get shorter, even dedicated cooks would rather spend less time in the kitchen and more time playing outside while we still can.

This colorful pasta, bursting with the bold flavors of ripe tomatoes, olives, capers, and — yes — anchovies, has become one of my summer favorites.  It’s super simple, versatile, and only requires enough time in front of the stove to boil a pot of pasta.

I found the recipe in the charming little cookbook, “Easy Everyday: Simple Recipes for No-Fuss Food” (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2008).  This is not a collection of dishes thrown together from processed foods.  Everything is freshly prepared from ingredients you would recognize in the raw.  But the techniques are uncomplicated  and the food is quite tasy.

This recipe is essentially a salad tossed with warm pasta.  Most of the ingredients will be found in a well-stocked pantry.

I’ve tweaked it to use penne pasta and colorful mixed cherry tomatoes rather than spaghetti and chopped tomatoes.  I’ve also prepared it while camping with a can of chopped tomatoes.

The big flavor boost comes from olives, capers and anchovies — packaged foods to be sure, but only the best.

A dish this simple is open to all sorts of variations.  If you have fresh basil handy, substitute it for the parsley.  Crumbled feta cheese would work just as well as the Parmesan.  Serve it warm as an entree or at room temperature as a side dish at a barbecue.

It’s certainly quick.  Stir all the sauce ingredients together while the pasta is cooking, then toss everything with parsley and Parmesan and serve.

What more can you ask in the last days of August?