Salad weather is officially done, so for now, I will mainly be living on pasta.
This one is toasted walnut, endive & watercress on casarecce, my fave pasta shape.
Caserecce holds the sauce very well but if you can’t get hold of it then don’t worry too much. Something like fusilli will also do the trick.
Endive and watercress may seem like odd vegetables to add but they are both “bitter” greens that are especially beneficial for the digestive system.
Nerd fact: bitter foods are fab for bile flow. Bile is involved in the digestion process of fats and helps the small intestine stay healthy. In a nutshell, bitter foods are good to beat the bloat.
And if you don’t care about that then here is a delicious plate of pasta:
Ingredients for 2:
100g walnuts
200g pasta (casarecce)
1 chicory/ endive (150g), shredded
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
75g watercress, roughly chopped
Juice & zest of 1/2 lemon
Organic extra virgin olive oil
Salt & pepper
Parmesan (optional)
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, toast the walnuts slightly (10 mins) then pulse roughly. You’ll want it to be like crumbs rather than flour.
2. Bring a large pan of salted water to boil. Cook the pasta to packet instructions & drain reserving some of the pasta water.
3. Pop a frying pan on a medium heat, add a splash of oil, the garlic & endive & cook for a minute until softened. Add a splash of water if it’s starting to colour. Colouring it will turn it too bitter.
4. Stir in the walnuts & lemon zest, the pasta, a generous splash of pasta water, the lemon juice and season really well with salt & pepper.
5. Take it off the heat. Stir in the watercress and a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
Serve with fresh parmesan shavings or if you are skipping this part then season with a touch more sea salt.