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Some dishes that I eat regularly are so simple that I almost don’t think of them as recipes worth sharing, but these are most likely the easy dishes that you would want to hear about.
I made my own pasta for this dish, which is much easier than you think, have a look at my post, the beginners guide to making fresh pasta. If you are mostly vegan like me you can choose flour that has a high protein content. I used wholemeal Khorasan flour which has 14.5% protein and holds together very well for pasta, spelt flour is very good too. I’ll put at the end of this post the address of a website for buying organic flours and pulses.
Of course using readymade pasta is perfectly fine. This recipe came from friends Gianni and Cinzia who I visited in Matera in the south of Italy and they use dried pasta.
For the sauce this time I used cauliflower as I have beautiful ones ready to eat in my veg patch,
but you can use quite a few other vegetables, broccoli, aubergines, peppers, courgettes all cut into small pieces, fresh peas or broad beans, the basic idea of the recipe remains the same. The vegetable is braised in olive oil with garlic until just cooked but still with a bit of bite, about a third of it is removed and put to one side, the rest has a little stock added and is braised until soft. This is then puréed with a hand blender or mashed to make a sauce, adding seasoning as you go. The removed vegetables are put back in the sauce to warm through and then the sauce is mixed into the pasta.
I love that this sauce is so light and full of flavour. It’s so versatile too as pretty well any vegetable that is in season can be used, herbs and seasoning can be varied. This has got me thinking about the recipe on this blog for Apicius inspired onions, with their flavouring of lovage, honey and herbs, which if two thirds of the onions were puréed would make a great sauce for pasta. I’ll try that next. it’s great that ancient Rome is inspiring today’s cooking!
Almost forgot the address for organic flour, grains and pulses
fincafood 