Straccetti Pasta with Lemon Cream is an easy light pasta dish, despite the creamy sauce. It was a perfect dish to make this weekend as my husband came home from a trip to Indonesia. His biological system is all discombobulated. Imagine, we were on Skype early Friday morning Georgia time, just before he was leaving the hotel in Jakarta. More than 24 hours later, he finally arrived safe and sound, late Saturday morning back home.
The weekend was a lot about sleeping (for him) and catching up. Trying to reset his biological clock and overcome the 11 hours time difference. Big meals and elaborate cooking is out of the question for a few days. My husband is not hungry at dinner time, he is hungry in the middle of the night. Wide awake in the middle at the wrong time – you know how that goes.
Since he is travels frequently, we are used to having a few lighter days a week. We are not heavy eaters (however, I am not shy to eat heavy), and lighter days usually do not include meat. Among other things, I make salads, with or without grains, a pasta dish with some cheese, or a meatless pasta dish.
For this recipe I used a more broader pasta, like the Straccetti because the sauce easily clings to it. By the way, did you know that straccetti means small rags; when you look at it, it does look like small rags. The term is also used for small strips of meat. Love it, how the Italian have so many down to earth names for their pasta or dishes. So, have some rags and enjoy.
Straccetti Pasta with Lemon Cream
Ingredients
- 4 ounces Straccetti pasta
- 3/4 cup cream
- 1 lemon
- salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup parsley
Instructions
- Boil a pot of water and salt.
- Grate the zest of a lemon and set zest aside.
- Peel the lemon by slicing off the 2 ends of the lemon, so you can stand the lemon on one end. Positing a paring knife or fillet knife on a top edge of the lemon, and moving the knife between the lemon flesh and the white pith. Follow the curve of the lemon until you reach the bottom. Repeat all around the lemon. Then place the lemon on the other end and remove any of the white pith you missed. Place the lemon in the palm of your hand and carefully cut the lemon segments from between the membranes. Collect the juice that drips from the fruit during the cutting and once you removed all the segments, squeeze any juice from the left-over lemon into a bowl.
- Chop the flat leaf parsley.
- Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook according to package directions.
- Warm a skillet over medium heat and add the cream and lemon segments and bring to a summer and allow the cream to thicken, approx. 5 minutes. Add lemon juice, half of lemon zest and half of chopped parsley.
- Drain pasta and add pasta to the cream sauce. Mix and allow the sauce to cling to pasta.
- Put the pasta on a plate and sprinkle with remaining lemon zest and parsley.
No Comments