I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Pasta is a deceptively simple thing. Flour, water, salt, maybe an egg - little more. When cooked it provides an excellent vehicle, or perhaps substrate, to deliver other flavors to the user. None of this is news.

Often though, we find ourselves in a saucing rut. We serve the same noodles, usually spaghetti, with the same old red sauce, sometimes with meatballs or sausage on the side. And, I hasten to add, there is nothing wrong with that at all. However, the sauce itself can be so much more, moving from a simple sauce-in-the-wings to stand center stage in the meal.

Like the kitchen-sink omelet, you can throw anything and everything on top of some pasta and call it a meal. I've certainly done so in the past and will do so in the future, with both omelets and pasta. The pasta provides the spine or canvas on which the other ingredients dance - if I may mix two or three metaphors. However, the forty-two ingredient kitchen-sink pasta sometimes seems a bit unfocussed, and the flavors are muddled. Often I'll try to keep it a bit simpler and use only two or three strong flavors for the dish.

This week, I thought I'd share two of those dishes with you, both of which recently appeared on plates at my house.

• 1/2 large yellow onion
• 8 oz mustard greens, or about 2 cups unpacked
• 1/3 cup salt cod, soaked overnight in quite a bit of water
• 1 1/2 - 2 cups crushed tomatoes, fresh or canned
• 1/2 red onion
• olive oil

Start by heating some oil olive over fairly high heat. While that's happening, dice your yellow onion fairly small. Cut your salt cod into the smallest pieces you can manage. (I actually find that cutting it pre-soak is often a bit easier. Your mileage, naturally, may vary.) When the oil is hot, put the onions in and cook them until they start to caramelize. Then add the salt cod and the tomatoes. Turn the heat down to a simmer and leave it for about forty-five minutes, stirring occasionally if so inclined.

At T minus 45 minutes or so, dice your red onion and add it to the sauce. Then walk away for another half-an-hour.

You are now at T minus 10 or 15 minutes. So get your pasta started. When the pasta goes in the water, add your mustard greens, chopped, to the sauce.

Usually, I'll strain the pasta a minute or two before it's done cooking and add it to the sauce to finish cooking. You can, of course, finish the pasta in the water and then just add the sauce on top, but I like it better this way.

A few steps here may seem a bit fussy - two kinds of onions added at different times, for instance - and you could certainly just use one onion at the beginning. I like the look of the red onion, though, and by adding it later, you get a little more fresh onion taste to go with the more fully integrated onion taste from the one that was cooked longer.

The salt-cod is certainly optional, too. I think it adds some depth of flavor without tasting fishy. If you omit it, you'll need to add salt because even after soaking, it's still got plenty of salt ...

• 5 or 6 garlic scapes
• 8 or 10 stalks of asparagus
• 1/2 cup hard grating cheese - parmesan, romano or the like. I used a sharp home-made hard cheese
• olive oil

Get your pasta water going, it'll take the longest. While it's heating, grate your cheese, cut the scapes into small pieces, perhaps 1/8", and cut the asparagus into 3/4" pieces, except for the tops which you can leave longer. It looks nice.

Start to heat some olive oil. When the pasta water is ready, toss in your pasta. Then put your asparagus and scapes in the olive oil. Add a pinch or two of salt and sauté the vegetables. When the pasta is done drain it quickly and then put it into your serving dish (or back in the pot, depending on how you made your pasta and your desires.) Add the vegetables and a dollop of olive oil, perhaps as much as a 1/4 cup. Mix well so everything is coated. Add your cheese and mix again. The residual heat should start to break the cheese down a bit so it all kind of comes together, not in a sticky mass, but kind of a gentle clinginess. Taste and add salt if needed, it will probably depend on how salty your cheese is. Black pepper is not a bad idea at this point. Serve.