Pasta sends me to sleep. Actually, it always has. It’s just that for years I failed to make the connection between my postprandial tiredness and what had been on my plate. I now take my dough of flour, eggs, and water in much smaller quantities, using it as the supporting actor rather than the lead. The result is a fresher, less heavy plate, yet somehow just as comforting. In many cases the pasta is padded out with vegetables: spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggplants, peas, cavolo nero, or broccoli. Members of the broccoli family work rather well with pasta, the folds and hollows of the cooked dough neatly holding onto crumbs of green vegetable. In what follows, we get a lot of pleasure for very little work: a plateful of soothing carbs with a creamy, cheesy sauce and masses of lightly cooked green vegetables. In short, a cheap, quick weekday supper.
Recipe information
Yield
enough for 2
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Bring two deep pans of water to a boil. Trim the purple sprouting, keeping the leaves intact and discarding any dry ends or tough stems. Generously salt the water in one of the pans and drop in the pasta.
Step 2
Lightly salt the water in the other pan and add the purple sprouting. As soon as it is tender, a matter of three or four minutes, drain it and wipe out the pan, returning the pan to the heat with the butter, garlic, and anchovies. Let the garlic and anchovies cook slowly for a minute or two—the anchovies will almost dissolve—then spoon in the crème fraîche and crumbled cheese and bring to a boil, stirring and immediately decreasing the heat to a slow bubble. Chop the purple sprouting coarsely, then add it to the sauce and season with black pepper.
Step 3
Drain the pasta lightly (a few tablespoons of the cooking water will help thin the sauce to the right consistency) and add it to the broccoli sauce.
