new recipe

[snugglekitty]

Last night I made Red Wine Spaghetti with Broccoli.



I followed the recipe almost exactly, which is something that I rarely do. I was tempted to omit the red pepper, because one of my guests does not have much of a tolerance for spicy food. However, even with the pepper, it was mild in flavor, so I recommend keeping that in. It was also great to have something to do with a low-grade bottle of wine someone had brought to one of our parties, other than drinking it.

The only thing that I did change was the cheese - I was out of Parmesan and substituted some dry Italian cheese and some mild dried goat cheese. When I make this dish again, as I'm planning to do, I will definitely do it with Parmesan or perhaps an Asiago. The recipe is fairly simple, and the cheese is expected to contribute a lot of the subtley of flavor.



Great with sweet potatoes on the side. Four stars.

Comments

[coraline]

hm.
i can't eat broccoli -- i wonder what veggie might make a good substitute?
(any ideas?)

a few ideas

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Can you have asparagus? I bet that would be good with it, especially if it was tender baby asparagus. Otherwise, some other green vegetable like kale would probably be good.

I think the two purposes of the broccoli in this recipe are:
- to offer variety in texture and appearance (this is one of the few recipes I've ever made that looked like the picture when I was done) and
- to flavor the water that the spaghetti is cooked in

So a totally different approach might be to cook the spaghetti first in a mixture of veggie stock and water, and simply sautee your veggies. That would be helpful in that it would expand the range of potential veggies to ones that soften when blanched.

That may be more information than you really wanted, but maybe it will help?

Re: a few ideas

[coraline]

more information is good!
thanks for that... i'll have to think about it (asparagus might work well, now i'm wondering what else might work. maybe spinach?)

i'm just intrigued by the concept of the red-wine pasta, really :)

Re: a few ideas

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

I don't think spinach would work, because it's not crunchy or chewy. Or, well, it would probably work, but I don't think it would do the same thing the broccoli does.

But in any case, I would be interested in hearing about it, if you do make it with a veggie substitute.

[mrpet.livejournal.com]

The green really helped balance out the color. It was a pale red from the wine.