Fennel Pasta

What happens when you put two contradictions together when it comes to food?  How would children respond?  This is exactly what I did with the dish below.  My children love anything that has macaroni, pasta or spaghetti.  And my son hates red capsicums that are cooked – my daughter hates zucchini in any shape or form.  This dish has red capsicum and two types of zucchini.  I need to make sure I cater to both their dislikes in the same dish or I would be “unfair” or in their own words, “Why do you hate me more?”  Mothers of teenagers could relate to this sentence I think.

I sometimes camouflage the capsicum with the tomatoes in a salad for my son, and he hardly ever recognizes the taste difference or then mixing the zucchini with the cucumber for my daughter.  In most cases it is just psychological or the looks of the vegetables that put them off.  Besides that, sometimes julienning them or grating them does a lot to disguise the vegetables or the taste. Combine some seasonings with the disguised vegetables, and you have a recipe for success.  The gentle flavors of the dill combined with the lemon and lemon zest do wonders to this dish.  In the recipe below, I did omit the yellow zucchini and instead doubled the green one.

Preparation Time: 25 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

500 grams pasta/macaroni or spaghetti

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 tablespoon pine nuts

1 large fennel, thinly sliced

2 yellow zucchini, thinly sliced or grated

2 green zucchini, thinly sliced or grated

1 red capsicum, thinly sliced

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

150ml cream

3 tablespoons fresh dill

3 tablespoons parmesan cheese gratings

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

1. Bring a large pan of water to boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions.  Drain and keep aside.  
2. In a separate pot, melt 1 teaspoon butter and toast the pine nuts in it till golden brown.  Keep the pine nuts aside.  
3. In the same pot, add the remaining butter and cook the fennel for about 7 minutes or until it begins to soften.  
4. Stir in the two types of zucchini and capsicum and cook, stirring for another 5 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.  
5. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, cream, dill and the drained pasta to the pot and stir to combine.  
6. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately topped with parmesan gratings.

 

Pesto Fish with Macaroni

Macaroni or pasta or spaghetti is a hit in our house any day.  The children would eat just about anything if it is served with macaroni or pasta or spaghetti.  Add some home made pesto to the macaroni and you have a good mixture of fresh vegetables and cheese and nuts also in the diet.

I add some fresh garlic pods to the pesto as it is good to fight against the cold.  The temperature here has been dropping again and more snow is expected next week.  Paris was in a complete chaos yesterday and today with the amount of snow that fell.  The children have to walk or cycle in the bitter cold to school and garlic helps keep their immune system strong.  Hence you will find a lot of garlic in most of my dishes.  

Macaroni

Last time I was in India, I got 2 kilos of garlic with me.  The garlic I found here in Belgium were the big tasteless Chinese garlic.  Then a good friend introduced me to the French purple garlic.  It is big like the Chinese one, but the taste is very good.  So I used all my Indian garlic in my garlic-ginger paste which I have preserved and use the French garlic for everyday cooking.  Of course the price of the Indian garlic was 75 rupees a kilo (about 2 Euro) and the French garlic costs 10 Euro a kilo (i.e. 600 rupees a kilo).

Preparation Time: 20 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo white fish fillet

500 gms macaroni

3 tomatoes

10 cloves garlic

Fish

200 gms parmesan cheese

2 tbsp pine seeds

1 bunch basil leaves

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt & black pepper to taste

Boil water in a pan and add the macaroni.  Cook according to the box instructions.  When ready, drain the water and keep aside.

Pesto and macroni mixed

Make a coarse paste of the basil leaves, pine seeds, basil leaves, garlic, tomatoes, half the parmesan cheese and half the olive oil with some salt.  This pesto can also be prepared a day in advance and stored in the refrigerator for use the next day.

Heat the rest of the olive oil in a pan.  When hot, put the whole fish fillet in and cook on low flame.  With a fork, gradually shred the fish as it starts cooking.  Add the pesto to this fish and cook for 2 minutes.  Now mix the drained macaroni to the mixture and stir well.  Serve hot garnished with the parmesan cheese.