Whenever I have too little time and too few ingredients on hand — or when I've been eating too much meat – I cook up some broccoli pasta.

Which means I make it for dinner about once every 10 days! It's delicious, healthy, inexpensive and easy to prepare. The recipe, in fact, is a cinch, consisting of just a few ingredients — pasta, chicken broth, Parmigiano-Reggiano, olive oil and a large head of the namesake crucifer. I always have four of those ingredients in house, so all I need to do is run out and pick up some broccoli and I'm good to go.

Another of this recipe's charms is its flexibility. I can swap in vegetable broth for chicken broth, spaghetti for the angel hair pasta, and any other grated hard cheese for the Parmigiano-Reggiano. Sometimes I'll even lose the broccoli in favor of roasted cauliflower or Brussels sprouts.