Sunday, March 11, 2012

pasta and courgette salad



Dinner from last Thursday. Again, a recipe from Plenty but with a few slight changes. Ottolenghi has the best flavour combinations, but his recipes often require a long list of spices and other additions. Most of them we have on hand, but sometimes we choose to substitute alternatives to save money or to make the meal a little healthier. In this case, we used spelt pasta rather than white pasta and reduced the amount of cheese.

Recipe summary: Fry thinly sliced courgettes until golden brown and drizzle with red wine vinegar, set aside. Blanch some frozen edamame beans and add to courgettes. Put some fresh basil and parsley with a touch of sea salt and drizzle of olive oil into a food processor and mix until you create a pesto-like sauce. Set aside. Cut up some cheese (we used home-made goat's milk ricotta, recipe in previous post, but Ottolenghi recommends buffalo mozzarella) and set aside. Cook pasta, drain, and add the courgettes, edamame beans, pesto, cheese and season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Essentially this is just a fancier version of regular pesto pasta, but as each stage is isolated it is very simple to make. Also keeps well if made ahead.


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