Eating With Ayla

Ohhh ya, creamy pasta, such a good treat. As my first entry in this blog to come, I’ve decided to feature a pasta that I love making.  Not only because it tastes good, but it is super easy – literally takes no time at all, with minimal ingredients.  It’s basically the perfect recipe for when you want something comforting and delicious, but you are also feeling extremely lazy.

Which happens to me. A lot.

As I write this, I’m trying to convince myself not to nap as soon as I get home and actually do something productive.   Something productive could translate into eating chocolate while watching TV, right?  Excellent!

Now, getting to the actual reason I’ve started this – the recipe. This pasta has always been a favorite of my brothers (and myself) – even though the base is cream, it is still fairly light.  One of the best things about it is the versatility, the ingredients that you want to add in can change every time.  Either depending on how you feel, or what you have in the fridge.   This time I decided to add in asparagus and smoked salmon – typically I like to leave it with just the cream and tomatoes, but hey, sometimes a person has got to live a little.

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
A handful of cherry tomatoes (around 6-7)
200 ml. package of light cream
Handful of asparagus
Smoked salmon
Lemon
Salt (for taste)
Spaghetti

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot with salted water to boil, and subsequently boil the pasta until al dente.
2. Heat up the olive pan in a large pan under medium heat, and while this heats up, chop up the garlic cloves into thin slices.  This is personal preference, as I love garlic and like thin slices in my food, as opposed to minced garlic.  Do what you prefer!
3. Once you put the garlic in the olive oil and it starts to slightly brown, add in the cherry tomatoes (chopped in half).
4. After a minute or so, add in the light cream – I prefer the sauce to be lighter, so I won’t add in the whole 200 ml.  If you have more pasta (or want a heavier sauce), then add more cream.
5. For this recipe, I added in asparagus (chopped into two inch pieces) – which I haven’t done before.  Thought it would be a good addition to have something green and perhaps a little healthy.  Add that in, as well as the juice of a lemon and just let the sauces simmer in a medium-low heat.
6. The pasta should have been done by this point, drain it and set it aside.
7. After the sauce has been simmering for a while, press on the tomatoes to let the juices out – I like to press on most of them, while leaving the rest untouched.
8. Add in the salt to taste and adjust accordingly.
9. I’ll let you know now that I am not a fan of black pepper – I know, crazy!  My recipes won’t include this spice, so please add that in at your own discretion (I won’t judge you, so you don’t have to judge me!)
10. Just before adding in the pasta to the sauce, I added in the smoked salmon and tossed it all together.  Voila! Now I’m hungry again.

Serves 2-3