I really enjoy tiny kitchen things. Tiny forks for eating grapes, tiny spoons for eating ice cream, tiny knives for cutting fancy cheese, tiny cups for juice, tiny plates for biscuits, and tiny bowls for everything! (I have four of them and affectionately call them my ‘mini bowls’ in a very particular voice intonation).
So of course I was giddy when I saw a recipe for tiny pasta! Now, GF tiny pasta is hard to find. The best I could do were these tiny pasta shells by Jovial, which let me say, were delicious. I couldn’t tell they were GF - they held their structure, toasted nicely in the pot at the beginning, and their texture was like authentic pasta, no mushiness or mealiness to be found.
I made this warm, wintery meal for my mother and sister who came to visit me in Chicago. It was a perfect weekend together, full of Christmas-y activities, including wearing matching pajamas. After spending much of the day walking around in the cold, our final evening consisted of this tiny pasta in my apartment with the heater on blast.
It’s a simple and surprisingly creamy endeavor. In my Dutch oven, I toasted sliced garlic (from two extraordinarily large cloves!). Soon after, the pasta joins and the goal is to toast the shells in the garlicky oil so they develop a slightly nutty flavor. Once I could smell the toasting pasta, I added salt, lots of black pepper, a cup of finely grated Parmesan (this works if you don’t have pecorino) and several cups of water. The water needs to simmer for about 22 minutes, until fully absorbed and reduced to a creamy, cheesy sauce. Alison instructs us to stir frequently, which encourages the pasta to release its starch, thickening up the sauce and turning the water an opaque white.
I plated (or should I say bowled?) the pasta and topped it with chopped chives and more black pepper. On most days, I would have chosen to add the raw egg yolk like Alison, but on this day, I just wasn’t in the mood. I served the pasta alongside Alison’s Raw Broccoli Salad with Shallots and Peanuts — a vegetable dish that completely surprised me. That one’s coming up next.
This pasta is like a sophisticated, slightly more complicated mac and cheese, and it still only takes 25 minutes. Let’s just say I won’t be making regular mac and cheese again any time soon.
185 recipes cooked, 40 to go.
