Pasta with escarole
Pasta with escarole is a quick and easy to prepare, light first course that grandmothers used to make when cleaning escarole. In fact, it was created to recover the greenest or outer parts of the vegetable, which are difficult to eat raw.
To add flavour to pasta with escarole, it is usually sprinkled with salted ricotta, but it is also excellent with parmesan or pecorino. For an even more intense flavour, half an anchovy can be melted when sautéing garlic.
Pasta and escarole, ingredients for 2 people
- 400g of escarole (net weight of leaves)
- 160g of spaghetti or linguine pasta
- 20g of grated salted ricotta cheese
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- Freshly grated black pepper to taste
- Coarse salt to taste
How to prepare the pasta and escarole
Clean the escarole by selecting the leaves and rinsing them under running water. Remove the tougher part of the stalks and the filaments. Coarsely chop it.
Fry the garlic in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Turn off the flame before the garlic browns, otherwise it will become bitter. Add a generous grating of pepper and cover.
Put the pot where the pasta is to be boiled on the fire, taking into account that it should be rather large because the escarole will also have to cook. When the water boils, add the salt and the escarole. Wait for the water to boil again, stir well and add the pasta. Drain the pasta very al dente (two or three minutes before the time indicated on the packet) together with the escarole.
Turn on the heat under the sauce pan, add the pasta with the escarole, a drizzle of raw oil and stir continuously until cooked. The escarole should dry out well, releasing water to the pasta and thickening the sauce. Serve with grated salted ricotta.
