My Mom's 15-Second Trick to Make Plain Weeknight Pasta Seem Fancy

They mastered the art of a quick supper when my sisters and I were young. It probably helped that they worked and carpooled together, which made it easy to plot on the way home and, when critical, pop into Southdown for last-minute basil recon.

Their coterie of recipes was deep: Marcella Hazan fettuccine riffs, tuna melts, matzoh brei, quesadillas on folded-over corn tortillas from which cheese oozed to form fricos on the hot griddle. At one point, despite being schmaltz-evangelists, they succumbed to the zeitgeist and purchased a George Foreman grill, which enabled a particularly obsessive spree of countertop chicken satay.

The couple tablespoons of ricotta can be hidden underneath the nest—surprise!—or swooshed into a cheese halo around it.While I've always associated this plating strategy with my mom, recent scrutiny revealed a more shadowy provenance. "It was something your dad first made me when we were living in Fort Greene in 1987," she told me by phone."He seemed to have borrowed the trick from his brother Jeremy, and exercised it liberally apropos of discovering Pomi in a box."

Over time, their sauce formula developed into a speedy version that came together while water was boiling: Sauté a couple cloves of minced garlic in olive oil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to avoid letting it brown. As soon as the garlic's soft, add whole peeled tomatoes you’ve crushed well with your hands, and cook just until it's hot all the way through and beginning to bubble. Add salt, remove from heat, and stir in lots of fresh shredded basil.

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