Pasta With Dandelion Greens And Oven-Dried Tomatoes
Yield: 1-2 servings
12 ounces farfalle, orichette, conchiglie, or your favorite pasta (see notes regarding serving sizes)
1 cup of pasta cooking water, reserved
handful of dandelion or other soft greens like spinach or baby arugula, washed, stemmed, and roughly chopped (approximately 1 ounce)
4 ounces fresh or frozen peas
2-3 teaspoons parsley leaves, roughly chopped (I used a small handful)
4 ounces oven-dried cherry tomatoes and the olive oil they were preserved or cooked in (recipe below)
1/2-1 large garlic clove, peeled and minced
zest of 1 large lemon
fresh lemon juice to taste
salt and pepper
your best olive oil, if needed
Instructions:
If you don’t have roasted tomatoes on hand, prepare a batch:
Preheat the oven to 325 F.
Line a large baking sheet with foil.
Wash and halve four to eight ounces cherry or Roma tomatoes. Place them on baking sheet, cut side up. Salt lightly, then drizzle with olive oil. Bake for about 90 minutes, until tomatoes are chewy, but not so dried out they’re turning to leather. If you place tomatoes in a sterilized half-pint jar and cover them with olive oil, they’ll keep in the refrigerator for months.
To make the pasta:
Fill a 4-quart saucepan with water. Salt water generously: about two tablespoons. I use Diamond Kosher salt.
Bring water to a rolling boil, then add the pasta. Follow the package directions for cooking pasta, remembering to reserve one cup of the cooking water. The safe method for reserving boiling pasta water is by ladling it into a measuring cup. The dangerous, not-recommended way is by dipping the measuring cup into the pan of water. I am not suggesting you do this.
If your peas are frozen, cook them in small pan of boiling water, microwave them, or, if you are a philistine like me, add them to the cooking pasta.
Place the greens, peas, parsley, oven-dried tomatoes, garlic, and lemon zest in a large bowl.
When the pasta is ready, add to the bowl of greens. Stir and taste, adding lemon juice and the olive oil from oven dried tomatoes, if available, to taste. If you have no tomato-flavored olive oil to hand, use regular olive oil. If the pasta seems dry, add some of the reserved pasta-cooking water to loosen as necessary. Season pasta with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve Pasta with Dandelion Greens and Oven-Dried Tomatoes warm or at room temperature. It’s a meal in itself, but a salad alongside never goes amiss.
Pasta with Dandelion Greens and Oven-Dried Tomatoes Keeps well for about three days, refrigerated. Don’t even consider freezing it.
Notes:
Arguments about pasta serving sizes rage. Suffice to say this dish is aimed at American diners, who view pasta as “the meal.” The American who ate this is actually from Canada. He ate the entire batch himself. For lunch.
You want a soft green like dandelion or spinach as the only “cooking” it gets is from the heat of the pasta.
If the oven dried tomato eludes you, we are coming into fresh tomato season as I write. The dish won’t be the same, but you could toss in halved fresh cherry tomatoes. Chunks of feta cheese would actually work better, flavor-wise. I think meat of any sort would overwhelm the flavor balance, but should you wish to toss in cold cuts, I’d have no way of knowing.