Because I'm away next week, I'm posting next week's Whip it Up recipe this week. I served it after my starter of Mozerella with Tomatoes and Basil and its another recipe from my new Nigel Slater cookbook.
Ingredients (serves 2)
- 750g broad beans in their pods
- 200g orecchiette, or other similar pasta
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- mint
- 250g ricotta cheese
- 2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 60g grated pecorino cheese
Pop the beans from their pods (you should end up with about 250g) and cook them in deep boiling salted water until tender. Seven to 10 minutes should do it. Drain the beans, rinse under cold running water and remove the skin from any beans bigger than your thumbnail. Tiny beans will have a thin skin that is perfectly edible.
Bring a large, deep pan of water to the boil and add the pasta. Peel and finely slice the garlic, put it in a shallow pan with the olive oil and let it soften over a moderate heat without colouring. Remove the mint leaves from their stems and chop then roughly, then stir them into the softening garlic. Tip in the beans and then the ricotta, in dollops. Add the drained pasta and fold the mixture together lightly with a fork.
Divide between two warmed pasta bowls and drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil and grated pecorino.
For once I actually followed a recipe. Are you proud of me? You should be. The only thing I did was use conchiglioni (large shell shaped pasta) instead of orecchiette, and that was only because I couldn't find orecchiette. And look, the recipe says "or other similar pasta" right there on it, so I was allowed to.
The recipe was easy to follow. And it was good. Really good. A very simple pasta dish, soothing and warm. The flavours are extremely subtle and don't pack a big punch, so some might find it bland, but I loved it. Made a too-hot curry last night? This would be the perfect recovery dish. I was a little surprised when John loved it too - he's very much a flavour man and believes that any meal is improved with half a bottle of either BBQ sauce or Thai Sweet Chili sauce. And he didn't add either of those to this dish - a miracle! The most arduous task was removing the skin from the beans which took much longer than I had expected, and to be honest I found that they were lost in the final dish so I'd probably skip them next time. And trust me, there will be a next time.
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