Taglierini with a Lemon, Cream and Watercress Sauce
All You Need:-
Taglierini (or fettucini or vermicelli) pasta
Fresh double cream
Fresh lemon juice
Watercress
We landed at Manchester airport after our week’s skiing and decided to have lunch in a pub on the way home just to delay the inevitable i.e the fact that the holidays were finally over and that the real world was going to hit hard again the next day. It also saved me having to go and slog round a supermarket on a Sunday afternoon.
So, come the evening, thanks to our lunch out, we did not have huge appetites – we just needed a little something to cheer us up. I peered into the fridge, as usual, and it wasn’t as bad as sometimes after a holiday. I had decided on a small bowl of pasta and just needed some ingredients to knock together a light sauce. There was some cream left over from Christmas and, rather miraculously, a bag of watercress which was still seemingly whole and appetising (as opposed to liquefied and disgusting). I had lemons. I had the remains of a packet of taglierini (fine ribboned pasta). So that was it then, I would do taglierini with a lemon, cream and watercress sauce. Easy.
I put a large pan of water on to boil and finished up the packet of taglierini – a thinner version of fettucini (which, in turn, are a thinner version of tagliatelle – you see, there is a sliding scale in pasta!). I always buy DeCecco if I can. It is, quite simply, the best pasta on the market in terms of flavour and holding its structure during cooking. (If you click the link it will show you the exact pasta I used and you can buy it from their website too. I find it in Waitrose, if you have one near you - or if you click here you can get it from Ocado - the Waitrose delivery service).
Meanwhile, I got out another smaller non-stick saucepan and put 3 or 4 tablespoons of cream into it and started to warm it gently. I then rummaged in the watercress bag and got out the bits which were still most wholesome and chopped them up. This then went into the cream sauce with the juice of about half to three-quarters of a lemon. (Do this by taste.)
The taglierini, being so thin, only took a couple of minutes to cook and the sauce, likewise, took just minutes. All you have to do then is put a little cold water into the pasta before draining it (to help wash off the starch without cooling it down too much) and then toss it in the sauce and maybe add a twist of pepper and a scattering of parmesan if that’s what you fancy. So quick - and remarkably tasty.
Taglierini (or fettucini or vermicelli) pasta
Fresh double cream
Fresh lemon juice
Watercress
We landed at Manchester airport after our week’s skiing and decided to have lunch in a pub on the way home just to delay the inevitable i.e the fact that the holidays were finally over and that the real world was going to hit hard again the next day. It also saved me having to go and slog round a supermarket on a Sunday afternoon.
So, come the evening, thanks to our lunch out, we did not have huge appetites – we just needed a little something to cheer us up. I peered into the fridge, as usual, and it wasn’t as bad as sometimes after a holiday. I had decided on a small bowl of pasta and just needed some ingredients to knock together a light sauce. There was some cream left over from Christmas and, rather miraculously, a bag of watercress which was still seemingly whole and appetising (as opposed to liquefied and disgusting). I had lemons. I had the remains of a packet of taglierini (fine ribboned pasta). So that was it then, I would do taglierini with a lemon, cream and watercress sauce. Easy.
I put a large pan of water on to boil and finished up the packet of taglierini – a thinner version of fettucini (which, in turn, are a thinner version of tagliatelle – you see, there is a sliding scale in pasta!). I always buy DeCecco if I can. It is, quite simply, the best pasta on the market in terms of flavour and holding its structure during cooking. (If you click the link it will show you the exact pasta I used and you can buy it from their website too. I find it in Waitrose, if you have one near you - or if you click here you can get it from Ocado - the Waitrose delivery service).
Meanwhile, I got out another smaller non-stick saucepan and put 3 or 4 tablespoons of cream into it and started to warm it gently. I then rummaged in the watercress bag and got out the bits which were still most wholesome and chopped them up. This then went into the cream sauce with the juice of about half to three-quarters of a lemon. (Do this by taste.)
The taglierini, being so thin, only took a couple of minutes to cook and the sauce, likewise, took just minutes. All you have to do then is put a little cold water into the pasta before draining it (to help wash off the starch without cooling it down too much) and then toss it in the sauce and maybe add a twist of pepper and a scattering of parmesan if that’s what you fancy. So quick - and remarkably tasty.
Comments