KITCHEN CHEMISTRY: Tried some weird stuff over the weekend. Recipes were heavily modified from a pasta cookbook I got for my birthday. The verdicts:

#1: Four-cheese sauce–which was really three-cheese, since I didn’t have parmesan on hand. I think I was supposed to toss the pasta with chopped cheese, and add some sage leaves or something, but that sounded boring. So instead I chopped a tomato and sauteed it with thyme, oregano, basil, black pepper, and cayenne, then added the Gorgonzola, mozzarella, and Roquefort, ending up with a kind of fondue-y sauce. This wasn’t bad, but the Gorgonzola overwhelmed all the other flavors. I’ll try this again with parmesan and without Gorgonzola. The other drawback was that the pan was slightly harder to clean than usual, due to all the melty cheesiness. I’ll be buying more mozzarella: I like cooking with it. I like how it rolls under the hand.

#2: Cannellini. I just dumped half a can of Goya habichuelas blancas (which I’m pretty sure are cheap cannellini) into my pan with a chopped tomato, some olive oil, and the same herbs as before, sauteed, and poured onto pasta topped with Sargento’s Mexican four-cheese blend. (I adore this packaged blend, by the way. It’s odd but it works wonderfully with Italian spices on pasta.) The resulting dish was homey and filling, but did not set off fireworks in my mouth. I’ll eat this again to finish off the beans, but I don’t think it was better than my usual sauce.

#3: Avocado, lemon, and jalapeno. I was nervous about this because I’d never dealt with an avocado before, and it intimidated me. But in the event it was exceptionally easy to cut and peel. (I don’t own a peeler, but I didn’t need it, as the skin came off easily once I’d cut into the flesh.) Again with the chopped tomato and the sauteeing and the herbs, this time with the jalapeno added in. Toss cooked pasta with avocado, squeeze half a lemon over it, top with sauteed sauce, top with Mex cheese. This was quite tasty, although the avocado and lemon flavors weren’t aggressive enough to compete. The jalapeno was delectable. I’ve started adding a jalapeno to my standard sauce, mmm. I’ll be buying more avocados: I think they’d work better as filling for grilled-cheese sandwiches, with tomato slices or maybe chopped onion.