Lemon & Green Olive Pasta

 

This pasta recipe I am sharing with you today for Lemon & Green Olive Pasta is a delicious riff on a traditional Italian Pasta Dish called Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. Spaghetti Aglio e Olio is a simple Italian dish of garlic, olive oil, parsley, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese tossed with cooked pasta. 

This dish differs in that the pan sauce includes buttery Castelvetrano Olives and crispy lemon bread crumbs. A garnish of more bread crumbs and cheese finishes it off.  It is also filled with lots of chopped fresh parsley, garlic and torn basil. 

In short it is yummo!!

Many of you may not be familiar with Castelvetrano Olives. They are like the caviar of green olives in my opinion, with a lush buttery flavour, being not overly strong or salty.

Whilst most olives can be a bit soft and mushy, these beautiful olives are firm and hold their shape really well. They are crisp and almost fruit-like.

There is a beautiful hint of creaminess to them, almost buttery.  Like I said, the caviar of green olives. If you think you dislike olives, you need to try these.  They will surely change your mind.

I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide when I was growing up.  Every year they would have a mother and daughter banquet. I did not always get to go, depending on how busy my mother was and if she could get child care for my siblings.

One year I did get to go however, and the occasion stands out in cleear my mind. We were served a beautiful turkey dinner along with a lovely dessert. This was the first time I had ever tasted frozen peas and I have never forgotten them.

My mother never bought anything but canned peas and I hated those. Frozen peas were so delicious in comparison. They spoilt me for ever wanting anything else.  There was also cranberry sauce which I had not tasted before. 

The banquette tables were adorned with relish trays holding crisp celery sticks and pickles and  . . .  olives.  Green, pimento stuffed olives.  I had never tasted an olive in my life.

I remember my mother telling me that if you don't like something at first, the more you made yourself try it, you could actually train yourself to like it.  She got me to try my first olive.

It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.  I had several and I am pretty sure that by the end of that banquet I was quite enjoying them.  I have been very much in love with olives ever since.

  

And I totally adore Castelvetrano olives.  I buy mine from Ocado, the online grocery shop.  They come in little jars. They are not pitted, which  probably  adds to their crisp deliciousness. 

Pale bright green in colour, this Sicilian olive is at its best in September and October, but you can pretty much buy them all year round. 

I guarantee that even if you are an olive hater, if you try these, you just might be converted into an olive lover.

For this recipe you begin by making a crisp and buttery bread crumb mixture which is flavoured lightly with lemon zest and seasoned simply with salt and pepper.

The Italians are quite fond of garnishing their pastas with crisp buttery bread crumbs.  In the South of Italy breadcrumbs are considered to be the "Poor Man's Cheese."  

Those who could not afford the luxury of a hard pecorino or parmesan cheeses, or the luxury of wasting a crust of bread, often turned their bread into toasted bread crumbs to sprinkle over their pasta dishes.

The lemon zest adds a beautful flavour to these. Using Panko bread crumbs makes them even lovelier and crisper, and so light. Some of the crumbs are used in the sauce and of course more are sprinkled over top of the finished pasta dish.

There is cheese as well.  How very utterly luxurious.  Do use a good quality Parmesan cheese and try to grate your own if you can.

When I was a child and my mother would make Italian Spaghetti, it was always accompanied with a green plastic container of grated cheese.   We called it smelly sock and not all of us liked it. I loved it. No surprise there!! 

Of course there is no real comparison between that and a good Parmesan cheese that you have grated yourself.  They are world's apart!

There is also garlic in the sauce, and a wonderful bunch of beautiful fresh herbs.  Flat leaf parsley and basil.  Chop the flat leaf parsely finely and then simply tear the basil leaves.

Basil is such a soft herb it doesn't really like being chopped.  It also doesn't like cold.  I never buy basil in packages of leaves. I always buy the plant if I can get it.  It always sits happily on my window sil.  I keep it well watered and it is very happy there.

There is also lemon in the sauce.  Both the zest and the juice.  I always buy unwaxed lemons now. They are a lot easier to find these days. No more scrubbing off the wax.

You still need to scrub them however. It is the best way of getting rid of any pesticides and bug dirt. I don't want to be eating either of those things and you shouldn't either!

 

The lemon adds such a beautiful fresh flavour to this dish.  I love, Love, LOVE lemon in anything and I am betting I am not alone in this. You get a double blast here, both in the bread crumbs and in the sauce.

Lemon and garlic are beautiful partners.  Throw in some basil, parsley and cheese and you have a marriage made in heaven! 

This sauce is a simple one but makes a wonderful change from the heavier sauces we usually enjoy with our pastas.  This sauce  is light and bright and really fresh!!

I could seriously eat this several times a week. And I love to enjoy the leftovers for breakfast. Cheeky I know, but that's me!  A glutton through and through.

I love the crunch of the bread crumbs scattered over top of the finished dish and yes, the additonal cheese.  You can tear up a few more herbs if you wish to scatter over top as well.

I used Bugatini today, but spaghetti and linguine also work well.  Long stranded pastas. Pasta's you can roll up with your fork, trapping all of that goodness in.

 

Today as I post these photographs I so wish that I had done more of the pasta in the bowl rather than the pan.  To be honest I was starving and could no wait any longer to dig in. 

I am so impatient when it comes to eating things that I love. Things like pasta and cheese and, olives and lemon and yes, even garlic.  And don't get me started on buttery bread crumbs.  I can completely lose myself in the deliciousness of it all.

Lemon & Green Olive Pasta

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Yield: 2

Author: Marie Rayner

prep time: 5 Mincook time: 15 Mintotal time: 20 Min

It always amazes me when a few simple ingredients come together in an unbelievably delicious way. If you love the flavours of lemon and good green olives you are going to adore this simple pasta dish. Incredibly tasty and very special.

Ingredients:

For the Toasted Lemon Breadcrumbs:

• 1/2 TBS butter
• 1/2 cup (45g) panko bread crumbs
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
• fine seasalt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the pasta:

• 1/2 pound (about 250g) bucatini, spaghetti or linquine pasta
• 2 TBS of a good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 TBS butter
• 1 fat clove of garlic, peeled and minced (about 1 tsp)
• pinch of crushed red chillies (red pepper flakes)
• 1/2 cup (90g) good green olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup (80 to 120 ml) pasta cooking water
• 1/4 cup (45g) finely grated Parmesan Cheese, plus extra to serve
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• the juice of half a lemon
• 3 TBS chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
• a small handful of torn basil leaves
• salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. First make the bread crumbs.  Melt the butter in a skillet and add the crumbs.  Cook and toast over moderate heat for one to two minutes until golden brown, moving them around constantly. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest and season according to taste.  Dump into a bowl and set aside until later on. Wipe out the skillet.
2. Put a large pot of lightly salted water on to boil.  
3. Add the olive oil and butter to the skillet for the sauce and warm over medium heat. Add the garlic and red chillies.  Cook for about 30 seconds until fragrant and then add the olives. Saute, stirring frequently, for a further couple of minutes, taking care not to burn the garlic. Season with a pinch of salt and some black pepper and set aside.
4. Add your pasta to the boiling water and cook to al dente according to the package directions.  Remove some of the pasta water a minute or so before it is done to use in the sauce.  Drain the pasta well and then dump it into the skillet with the olive mixture.  Add 1/4 cup (60ml) of the pasta water along with the cheese.  Toss to combine all of the oil, pasta water and parmesan to create a sauce, adding more water if need be.  Add about a quarter of the toasted bread crumbs, the lemon zest,  the lemon juice, the parsley and the basil. Toss again to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Top with more bread crumbs and additional parmesan cheese if desired and serve immediately.

notes:

I used Castelvetrano olives for this pasta. They are mild, buttery and delicious.

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If you are looking to try out a new pasta dish this week look no further. This one is a winning combination all round. Although the quantities are for only two people, you can very easily multiply them to feed more!

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