Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

I don’t have a very large repertoire of side dishes, and I haven’t cooked with orzo before, so I was excited to try this recipe.

If you aren’t familiar with orzo, it is a small, rice-shaped pasta that cooks up quickly and can be flavored in a hundred different ways. This dish was simple, very tasty. You boil the orzo until tender (about 9 minutes), drain it, then toss it with the parmesan, peas and a bit of butter.

Any vegetable could be used here, although you might need to precook it. I ended up adding a bit of the pasta water to keep the dish from getting too dry. This dish would go with just about anything and the leftovers are good reheated.