Tag Archives: parmesan

Pasta with roasted red pepper and walnut sauce

2 Replies

This is a super simple, super tasty little dish which you can prep beforehand and then, after cooking the pasta, assemble at the last minute.

Ingredients

3 red peppers (you can also use an orange or yellow one but the red adds a good colour; don’t use green peppers)

75g walnuts, lighted toasted

1 garlic clove mashed

1 tablespoon of pomegranate molasses (nice but not essential, I’ve made it without)

zest of one lemon

20g parmesan

pinch chilli flakes

25g chopped flat leaf parsley

four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

300g pasta – linguini or tagliatelle are a good shape here

 

Method

You need to roast the peppers for 30 minutes at 220C, and you can do this bit the day before or earlier in the day. Once roasted and cool, skin, de-seed and finely chop the peppers. As you can probably see from my pic, I chop mine very inaccurately and have tiny pieces and sometimes the odd larger piece. It is better if you take the time to really chop the pepper quite finely – so don’t be like me.

I’ve often thought about keeping the juice the peppers exude and mixing it into the pasta later, lessening the amount of oil, but confess I’ve yet to do it because I forget.

If you haven’t already, lightly toast the walnuts for five minutes but watch carefully because we know how readily nuts burn. Finely chop these too.

Once the peppers are all cooled and de-seeded and chopped, you can add in the rest of the sauce ingredients – which is basically all of the rest of the ingredients above save for the pasta. What I tend to do is do the peppers and walnuts and assemble the rest just before dinner time.

But whichever you do, at some point, you need to mix together the other ingredients to make the sauce and then season it. I forget to season something and it’s also okay. The chilli flakes lift it but I add those over the plate as my children don’t like them.

Cook the pasta, or have it cooking whilst you mix together the sauce. Then when the pasta is ready, drain, plonk into a big serving bowl and put the pepper sauce on top. Serve with extra parmesan/chilli flakes if you like. Voila.

Stracciatella in brodo

Leave a reply

Many people may associate stracciatella with ice cream and indeed, you can and do get stracciatella – traditionally flor di latte ice cream with bits of chocolate in.

Straccio in Italian means ‘rag’, bits of cloth.

Stracciatella in brodo is, to my mind, one of the finest foodstuffs. It is oft made, in Italian kitchens, as a bit of a ‘scratch’ meal when there’s not much else. But to think it’s in anyway lacking because of this is to be a fool. It is deeply nourishing and savoury, good for you, ready in minutes if you have some stand by ingredients and I’ve never met a child who doesn’t love it.

I do have home made chicken broth in the freezer on stand by. I make it in batches. But of course you could use a stock cube. Then all you need is some baby pasta (optional), parmesan (which I buy in bulk, grate and keep in the freezer) and an/some eggs.

Don’t be afraid by the lack of precision in the ingredients, just go with it.

This is what you need:

A quantity of chicken broth for the amount of people you have

An egg per person

About 20-30g of small pasta (I use stelline – little stars) per person. It must be small.

Some parmesan, grated

This is what you do:

Cook the pasta separately.

Warm up the broth until simmering.

Break the egg(s) into a separate bowl and beat well – this is important

When ready to go, stir the broth and beat in (with a fork or a whisk) the egg. It will cook immediately. Then add the pasta and a good helping of parmesan and serve.