Spaghetti with mascarpone and chives
If you are serious about cooking with the seasons, then one of your first tasks is to check what is growing in your own garden. Or, in our case, the flower boxes hanging outside the windows.
This week that meant, due to recent potting of herb plants by my darling wife, that I had a lot of chives to work with. They are a bit special. I can easily and regularly use marjoram, thyme, basil, oregano or cilantro, and even parsley can find a place in a lot of dishes, but for chives there is a need for something fishy (salmon), something soupy (Japanese noodle soup), or a pasta dish with cream.
Cream can be rather bland. It works great with a combination of bacon and cheese in a so-called carbonara sauce. Here, I used garlic for spice and a combination of mascarpone and Parmesan cheeses. And chives.
Ingredients
- 200 grammes straight pasta, spaghetti
- one small tub of mascarpone
- four gloves of garlic
- 50 grammes of grated Parmesan cheese
- A spoonful of chopped chives
- Olive oil
- White pepper
Steps
- Bring water to the boil in a large pan.
- Chop the garlic.
- Wash, dry and chop the chives.
- Put olive oil in a small skillet and bake the garlic until it starts to brown.
- Put pasta in the boiling water and cook for the prescribed time.
- Take the garlic out of the skillet (or take the oil out and keep the garlic).
- Put the mascarpone in a bowl (or in the skillet) with the garlic and turn with a spoon. Add the Parmezan and continue turning to obtain an even, smooth, paste.
- Drain the pasta, let it cool a little while then add to the bowl with mascarpone and turn and toss so that the spaghetti gets evenly coated. Add white pepper from the mill, some more Parmezan and chives.
I served this dish with a salmon steak.