Asparagus, peas and a handful of soft herbs, tossed through pasta with lemon and parmesan. Nothing here is cooked for long. The point is to keep the greens bright and snappy rather than stew them. Grab the first of the season’s asparagus at Queen Victoria Market, delivered to your door or via Click & Collect!
Serves 6. Cooking for 3? Just halve the ingredients.
Ingredients
- 500g dried pasta
- 100g pine nuts
- ¼ cup (60ml) olive oil, plus extra to serve
- 5 shallots, quartered lengthways and finely sliced
- 450g thin asparagus, woody ends snapped off, cut into 1cm lengths on the diagonal
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 250g podded fresh or frozen peas
- 60g parmesan, finely grated, plus extra to serve
- 40g butter
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 cup roughly chopped soft herbs (parsley, chives and mint)
- Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
- Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
Method
- Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to the boil. It should taste like seawater. Cook the pasta for 2 minutes less than the packet says, since it finishes in the pan. Reserve 2 cups of the pasta water before draining.
- While the pasta cooks, toast the pine nuts in a large dry frying pan over medium heat for 3–5 minutes, stirring constantly, until golden at the edges. Tip into a bowl.
- Return the pan to the heat with the olive oil. Add the shallots with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook for about 5 minutes, until golden.
- Add the asparagus and garlic with another pinch of salt and cook for 3 minutes, until the asparagus is bright green and just tender to the tip of a knife. Stir in the peas and cook 2 minutes more.
- Add the drained pasta and 1 cup of the reserved water. Toss over the heat for about 2 minutes until the liquid thickens and starts clinging to the pasta. That starch is doing the work of a sauce.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir through the parmesan and butter until glossy. Add more pasta water a splash at a time if it looks tight.
- Fold through the lemon zest, juice, herbs and pine nuts. Adding the herbs off the heat keeps them fresh and green rather than khaki.
- Taste and season. Serve with extra parmesan, a drizzle of olive oil and chilli flakes if you like.
Adapted from Cookie and Kate.
