I had my friend Raz over for dinner on Friday night and as it had been a couple of months since we’d caught up, I wanted to go for something pretty quick, so we could focus on the talking rather than time spent in the kitchen.
Lovely Easy Caramelle with Ricotta, Basil & Black Olives
Caramelle is Italian for “sweetie” which is what this pasta is supposed to look like when done – like a bon bon, with the twisted ends. To make things easy, I decided to cheat and rather than spend the time making fresh pasta, I bought fresh egg lasagne sheet. I feel as though I’ve taken a few short cuts lately, but really, I have made pasta before and will make it several times more before my year in the kitchen is out, so I figure, where I can cheat, I will.
For the pasta stuffing, I combined ricotta, nutmeg, finely chopped basil and black olives, grated parmesan, S&P & olive oil. When I went to make the “sweeties”, things went a little pear-shaped and apparently karma was out to get me, for taking my short cut. Even though the pasta was fresh and soft, it was by no means as fresh and soft as if I’d made it from scratch that night and so when I tried to squeeze the ends together to seal in the filling, it cracked and split a bit, making leakage during cooking look like a sure thing. But with the help of my slotted spoon and some quick work with a saucepan of simmering water, I managed to avoid serving up too much of a watery mushy mess and ended up with some pretty creamy caramelle served with a tasty tomato sauce (cherry toms, basil and garlic, fried then slowly simmered).
Without getting too preachy, obviously I learnt a lesson here and will try to avoid the short cut again, but I make no promises. I’d hate to have to learn another lesson about making promises one can’t keep…
Xx
No comments:
Post a Comment