Treasure Chest Pasta

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The incredibly versatile ‘un-nut’ plays a leading role in this adventure. Very easy to make, and simply delicious. Literally. (Rcp# 79, with Ingredient Special on Chestnuts).

Ingredients for ‘Treasure Chest Pasta’

  • 25-30g dried and salted tomatoes (chopped, small pieces)
  • 30-35g grated fennel bulb
  • 45-50g grated parsley root (looks like parsnips, but tastes more like parsley)
  • 2 tablespoons olive water (salted water from olive jar, preferably green ones)
  • 1 tablespoon almond butter (stir before taking out to make creamy again)
  • 10-12 sliced pre-cooked chestnuts (or broken pieces, not crumbled)
  • 1 tablespoon chopped chives (fresh or frozen)
  • ½ tablespoon chopped basil (fresh or frozen)
  • ½ stalk of lemon grass
  • 1 large slice of ginger
  • 3 tablespoons canola oil (for browning)
  • 300 ml broth (see recipe for [AnyBroth] or [Vegetable Broth], hot water works as well, but broth will give more depth)
  • pasta for 3 people (spaghetti or spirelli made from whole grain spelt or spirelli made from buckwheat)

Cooking Instructions for ‘Treasure Chest Pasta’

  1. Sauté ginger slice and lemongrass in canola oil for 10 minutes, keeping at low temperature.
  2. Take residue out with a slotted spoon and add grated fennel and dried tomatoes. Stir, then add grated parsley root. Carefully brown all at low temperature, moving frequently.
  3. Add olive water, let the solids absorb the liquid, then turn off and remove from the heat.
  4. Prepare pasta in another pot, saving 150 – 200 ml of the pasta cooking stock.
  5. Add broth (or hot water) to the sauce and bring to a brief boil, then turn back down to a gentle simmering and add almond butter. Stir until all almond butter is dissolved, then turn off.
  6. Add sliced, precooked chestnuts (or chunks of broken pre-cooked chestnuts), plus chives and basil (make sure to remove hard parts if frozen).
  7. Before serving, add hot cooking stock from the pasta and reheat the sauce briefly, if needed. That means just warm up for 3 – 5 minutes on lowest heat, do not cook or boil. Pour sauce over pasta and serve with freshly grated cheese (we use an excellent plant-based hard cheese, type ‘Manchego’, made from almonds).

Makes: 3 – 4 servings

Side Notes:

  1. I came up with this recipe when I realized that the pre-cooked chestnuts actually have a nice chewy quality to them, kind of like cheese, tofu, or any other chunky add-on to a pasta dish. Also, I love chestnuts and wanted to give them the leading role in this dish. They go very well with hearty and spicy, too. This was a spontaneous roll, and it stuck. Probably because it is ridiculously easy to prepare. One of our favourites.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.