This might be one of my favourite pasta dishes to date. I really love Spaghetti Carbonara, but this one may have topped it. I wouldn’t recommend this meal if you are trying to lower your calories though. There are a million ways to use roasted garlic, but creamed into a sauce is a common practice in my kitchen. If I am turning the oven on to roast something I’ll often throw a bunch of unpeeled, oil-soaked cloves on the pan with whatever I’m roasting and pop them into the fridge so that when I need it it is ready to go. In this case I roasted cauliflower and so I just broke up two bulbs worth of cloves and roasted them with the cauliflower.
The traditional way to roast garlic seems to be to cut the top of a bulb off and roast it in tinfoil, but you keep more of the garlic this way and you don’t have to use tinfoil.
This belly warming dish would pair really nice with a radicchio salad with autumn ready fruits and a balsamic based dressing…and a whole roasted garlic as an appetizer with baguette.
Ingredients
Garlic:
- I used two bulbs of one of the porcelain varieties for this recipe. I think it was Yugoslav, but I don’t recall for sure. Doesn’t really matter, I just love the way the large porcelain cloves roast whole in the oven skin on. I used the Czech garlic to roast whole for the appetizer.
Main Ingredients:
- Fettuccine- fresh if you can source it
- Half a head of cauliflower (less if it is a large cauliflower)
- 6 tbsp butter
- 1 3/4 cups heavy cream
- 1 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
- 2 tsp flour with 1 tbsp heavy cream
- Two cups Swiss chard sliced into ribbons
- Olive oil
- Crushed walnuts
- Parsley- chopped up
- Salt
- Lemon juice
- Black Pepper
Preparation:
First thing, get a large pot of water with salt in it ready to boil for the pasta. Then get ready to roast your cauliflower and garlic! Set the oven temperature to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Chop your cauliflower or slice about 1/3 of an inch thick in pieces. Grate some of your lemon rind and cut the lemon in half to squeeze out the juice. In a bowl toss the chopped cauliflower with the lemon juice, lemon zest, 1 1/2 tbsp of olive oil, a few pinches of salt and a couple tbsps of the grated parmesan. Throw in the cloves broken up from two bulbs of the porcelain garlic whole with skin on. On a baking sheet, spread the cauliflower and garlic cloves out so that it is not to crowded and place in the oven. If you would like some roasted garlic as an appetizer to serve with a baguette or Italian loaf of bread then slice off the top of a bulb of garlic and place it in some tinfoil or a garlic roasting ceramic dish with lots of olive oil. This should bake for 25-35 minutes. Keep an eye on the cauliflower. It should turn a dark golden brown when it is ready. The roasted garlic is ready when the garlic goes soft.
Meanwhile in a large sauce pan, melt the butter, add the cream, a few dashes of salt to taste and some black pepper and the rest of the parmesan. Whisk these all together and slowly add the flour cream mixture to thicken the sauce. Keep on a very low simmer, whisking occasionally until the roasted garlic is ready to add.
Put your pasta in the boiling pot of salt water and make sure not to overcook. Drain the pasta and toss with the ribbons of Swiss chard and a little bit of olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking together. If your pasta is fresh it will take very little time to cook!
When the roasted cauliflower and garlic is ready you can put everything together. Put out your roasted whole garlic with some bread for people to snack on before dinner and in the meantime peel your roasted garlic cloves (make sure they are not too hot to the touch) and mash it into your simmering sauce with a fork.
Place pasta on a plate with a ladle of creamy garlic sauce on top, a handful of the roasted cauliflower, some crushed walnuts (toasted if you like) and sprinkle some chopped parsley and more ground black pepper if you wish.
Buon appetito!
Photo by JS Gordon-Moran, www.
