Saturday, April 21, 2012

Green spaghetti


Quick!  The boy is sleeping... I may just have time to try to persuade you to make pasta with a sauce of boiled cabbage and onion.  It doesn't sound very appealing does it... but it is delicious, I promise you, and also healthy, quick and cheap as chips - which, let's face it, is an all-too-rare combination of qualities in a dinner.  We eat it every couple of weeks and never get fed up of it.  I have even had some success feeding the startlingly green sauce to Isaac.  One day soon I will take a deep breath, plonk a bowl of the pasta in front of him and let him dig in with his hands, painting himself, his highchair, the floor and anything else within a one-metre radius a fetching emerald shade.

Green spaghetti
Adapted not very much at all from Jamie Oliver

Sauce serves 4-6 - we make a whole batch and freeze half

1 large leek, washed and cut into chunks (an onion also works)
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
2-3 big handfuls of cavolo nero or curly kale, washed well, tough stalks removed (Jamie says savoy cabbage works too - I think that might be taking the boiled-cabbage thing too far but should try it one day)
100g dried spaghetti, linguine or your choice of pasta per person
50-100ml good olive oil - the quantity proportional to the poshness of the oil (more of a posh one, less if it's  bog standard)
Grated parmesan



Bring a pot of well-salted water to the boil, add the leek or onion and garlic and simmer for 3 minutes (a bit longer if you're using onion).  Add the greens and cook for another 3-4 minutes, until they are just tender and a beautiful bright green colour.  Tip the veg into a colander set over another saucepan, and then into a blender, adding a slosh of cooking water and the olive oil.  Blend to a smooth puree of impossible greenness and feel healthier already.

Bring the cooking water back to the boil in the second saucepan, adding a bit more water from the kettle if necessary, and cook your pasta until just al dente - a bit harder than you like to eat it, as you're going to cook it a tiny bit more.  Drain the pasta, keeping the cooking water, and return to the saucepan.  (I am always telling Matt off for not keeping the pasta cooking water.  He never learns.)  Add as much of the sauce as you like, along with a bit of pasta cooking water and a good grating of parmesan, and simmer for another minute or so.  (I like my pasta more liberally sauced than is considered proper by the Italians, and was told by a teacher at cooking school that I'd get booted out of Italy for grating my parmesan on a microplane, but I'm just a renegade like that.)  Taste and add a grinding of black pepper, and more salt and cheese if needed.

Serve on warm plates with more grated parmesan on top.


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