Vegetarian Recipes with Attitude: The site that elevates tofu to a foodstuff.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Pasta with Fresh Broadbeans and Ricotta

Sorry. Sometimes the effort of dreaming up 'witty' titles just gets too much and I'm forced back into being descriptive.

I haven't actually made this yet. I bought all the ingredients and even podded the beans, but then a minor domestic emergency happened. But I'm looking forward to it tonight. It was one of those 'What if I...' ideas I have while waiting at traffic lights.

Signore Inginere Anton Gelli is one of The Pie's longest standing members. In time, that is. In stature he's a bit of a shortarse. He's been with us before we were even a website, let alone a blog. As he will attest, different forms of pasta have entirely different functions, and it's important to use a sympathetic noodle. I think this one would work with linguine, but as it was I settled on trofie. The site I stole this picture from tells me that they're Seattle's current 'it' pasta, but don't let that put you off. I nearly got orrichiete. That would have been quite wrong. For starters, they are too similar in shape and size to broad beans. I can't explain why that's important. It just is. Like...if you make a sauce with whole cherry tomatoes and basil, you have to serve it with buccatini. Serving it with spaghetti would be as wrong as serving garlic and chilli with buccatini.

But I digress...

Take your fresh broad beans and pod them. Some would also advocate peeling them, but life's to short. Just buy fresh, young beans.

Braise them very briefly in some olive oil, a little stock, some fresh thyme and garlic. I suggest leaving the garlic whole to keep it nice and sweet.
Cook your trofie.
Add the drained trofie to the broad bean pan.
Toss together with some crumbled ricotta, chopped flat-leaf parsley, a little fresh mint and snipped chives.
Serve topped with coarsely grated pecorino.


Sgr Gelli and I have also been discussing biscuits. Alexei Sayle once pointed out that a lot of biscuits seem to be named after Italian leaders:
"You've got your Bourbon biscuits, your Garibaldi biscuits and your Peak Frean's Mussolini Assortment."
(Links provided for the assistance of USAnian readers who may be unfamilar with UKanian crunchy comestibles. Oh...and we mean 'cookies', not scones with gravy.)

Following further research, Sgr Gelli has discovered Jacobs Jacobites. Leading Jacobite insurgent Bonnie Prince Charlie was, of course, Italian. Don't believe all those pictures on the shortbread tins! They're papist propaganda.

No comments: