Trapani rigatoni and Cooking with Charlotte
It was time… It had been too long ago that Charlotte and myself (and Winfried) cooked up something fun together.. Well actually that is not even entirely true as Charlotte is also part of our cooking club so it’s not really that long, but cooking with more then two/three in this case does not count.. 🙂 And quite frankly it is more or less and excuse to get together and have fun. And what better way to do that then in the kitchen. It was also on the first day of spring so a gorgeous gorgeous sunny day (I love spring don’t you? Flowerbuds and blossom are still a bit hesitant, but promise is in the air for sure!) After my failure with the buns earlier I figured I needed to make a bread that I knew how to do and it was easy to pick my pumkin-walnut focaccia that we so loved the last time I made it.
It’s almost become kind of thing for us to make a Jamie Oliver recipe everytime we cook together. Possibly because the only decent cookbook that Charlotte owns is a Jamie cookbook (o, hahaha… sorry Charlotte, couldn’t resist..) so the rest is history… I had gotten Jamie’s 30 minute meals for christmas and while I love browsing through it I hadn’t actually made any recipes out of it yet. So we very quickly agreed on what we were gonna make. That same morning while reading through my stack of cookbooks in bed (do you do that too? Read cookbooks in bed??) I had already seen the dessert I fancied, which was a trifle of sorts with limoncello. We still had limoncello in the freezer from our trip to Italy so I figured it would be perfect for this! It didn’t take long for Charlotte to be convinced (2 seconds maybe?) as one look at the recipe and she was convinced too. It is that good!
I’ve always been a little hesitant to really believe the 30 minute menus. I mean, sure I can do a dish in 30 minutes as I love doing quick dishes during the weekdays, but a whole 3-course menu in 30 minutes seemed a bit too much too handle. But since we made two of the recipes of this particular 30 minute meal (we skipped the salad) I am inclined to think that it can actually be done. The pasta is incredibly tasty and the only thing is that you do need a kitchenmachine or blender to make this, otherwise it’s possibly much longer. But we all loved the pasta, which is virtually vegetarian apart from the anchovy that goes in the sauce. Tom – always a meat eater – did not even complain that he didn’t get any meat. (he did complain that we did not make a more fancier menu after having been in the kitchen the entire afternoon, but he doesn’t get the ‘girls-need-to-be-able-to-talk-too’ thing… 🙂
I will give you both the recipe for the limoncello trifle and the pasta you can find here and I would really encourage you to make both! (plus the focaccia too….!! Sooo good!)
Trapani rigatoni
Ingredients
- 500 gr dried rigatoni
- 40 gr parmesan cheese
- 100 gr whole blanched almonds
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1-2 fresh red chili peppers our supermarket was out of the chili's so I used chilipepper puree which you can buy in a bottle here. That worked fine!
- 2 large bunches of basil
- 4 anchovy fillets in oil
- 450 gr cherry tomatoes preferably red and yellow ones if you can find them
- Put the cheese (in chunks) with the almonds, the garlic and the chili pepper (if you use whole chili's then remove the stalks. If you prefer extra hot, keep the seeds in, otherwise remove before adding to the magimix) in the magimix and chop finely. With motor running add 1,5 bunch of basil, the anchovy and about 2/3 of the cherry tomatoes. Mix everything until it resembles a puree and add two good lugs of olive oil. Taste the mixture and add seasoning if needed. Set aside for later use.
- Cut the remaining tomatoes in half or quarters and put aside. In the meantime you could have cooked your rigatoni so check if they are done. Leave them to drain and keep a little bit of the cooking fluid separately. Put the pasta back in the hot pan and mix with the puree and stir it all together well. Add a little cooking fluids if it is a bit too dry or dense.
- For serving put it in a large dish, shake it again and add the remaining cherry tomatoes and basil leaves to it.
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
