Amy’s Midweek Puntarelle ‘Green Pasta’

Puntarelle (meaning ‘little tips’), also known as Cicoria di Catalogna (Chicory of Catalogna), is an Italian chicory and winter green born with a fulfilling crunch and a bitter bite. We recommend you serve this one with a side salad of radicchio leaves (we have those growing too!). The recipe is lovingly brought to you by Amy, our brilliant Food Hub Co-ordinator. You can read more about her here!

Ingredients

• One healthy head of Puntarelle
•  Bunch of Parsley
• Couple of Anchovies
• Garlic X3 cloves
• Little bit of Preserved lemon
• EVOO
• Salt & Freshly Cracked Pepper
• Any hard Italian cheese on hand
• Pasta (recommended shapes: Casarecce, Strozzapreti, Garganelli or Trofi - as you can see I didn’t have any of those on hand)
  
• Pasta water
  

If you have stale bread, make breadcrumbs by blending them and then slowly frying them off with some chilli flakes and salt

Process (loose, up for interpretation)

• Separate the leaves from the stalk component of the puntarelle.

• Add some hot water to a saucepan and drop any leaf bits in, blanching for 4 minutes. Once done, chill in icy water and then rinse and add to a blender.

• Stalks - Blanch in water for 3-4 minutes, or until just tender. Remove the puntarelle and drain.

• Back to your blender - chop parsley and add it to the leaves, adding salt, EVOO and the preserved lemon along with one anchovy. Blend but leave chunky!

• Bring a pot of water to the boil. Add salt and bring to the boil again. Cook the pasta. You’re going to be done so soon it’s just magical.

• Heat the EVOO in a pan and melt the anchovies into it, with the garlic clove.

• Add the puntarelle and let it cook for a few minutes, stirring continuously. Add in the parsley mix.

• Drain the pasta and add to the puntarelle and parsley mix, slowly adding pasta water if required and stirring that in first. Top with the breadcrumbs.