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Pasta with walnut sauce recipe

Pasta with walnut sauce recipe

By Nigella Lawson

This Nigella recipe is taken from the Christmas Special of her Channel 4 programme Nigella Bites. These recipes are simple and stress-free. As Nigella Says: "Christmas food is the best sort of food because it's about proper, unpretentious home cooking. Feasting isn't about formality: it's about providing friends and family with good things to eat."

Ingredients

175g shelled walnuts (about 350g unshelled weight)
half a clove of garlic minced
1 slice of Granary bread (crusts removed)
150ml full fat milk
25g grated parmesan
3-4 tablespoons olive oil (Ligurian)
salt and pepper
1kg any flat short pasta

METHOD

How to cook pasta with walnut sauce

1.Put a large saucepan of water on to boil, and toast the walnuts in a dry frying pan until they begin to make a nutty aroma.

2.Put the bread in a bowl and cover with the milk.

3.Put 150g walnuts into a blender along with the minced garlic, bread soaked in milk, and the parmesan cheese.

4.Blend everything on the mouli setting until it turns smooth and creamy, then pour in the oil and season well with salt and pepper before blending again.

5.Pour or scrape into a bowl, add pasta to boiling water with salt and cook for the required amount of time.

6.Reserve a cup of pasta cooking liquid and then drain the pasta, but put it in to a large bowl while it's still dripping slightly with water.

7.Sprinkle a little olive oil over the pasta to prevent it sticking together, and then add the walnut sauce working it through (splash in a little pasta cooking liquid to make the sauce less thick if needed).

8.Roughly chop the remaining walnuts and toss them over the top along with some more parmesan cheese and the chopped parsley.