How Sicilians TURN Asparagus Potatoes and Garlic into Pasta Food That Looks After You Series

Ciao and welcome. Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, oh I really fancy eggs for dinner tonight and you do not quite have all of the ingredients and you find yourself thinking, oh what can I make instead? But that is what actually happened to me this morning. I woke up thinking, oh I really fancy pasta con i tenerumi. Tenerumi are the leaves from the zucchini, is an Italian word and it is a very much a summer dish, very very popular in Sicily of course, but we are in the middle of winter and we are not in Sicily, we are in the UK. So I end up sometimes adapting something else that resembles the original dish and that is actually exactly what I am doing today. I woke up wanting pasta con i tenerumi but I've actually found my last batch of heavily reduced asparagus in the fridge so I will be doing something which is similar to that but obviously with a few different ingredients. And wanting to be really honest with you, that is what I really like about cooking, not necessarily having to follow a script or a set recipe because sometimes you do not have all of the ingredients so you have to do with whatever you've got at home. So I cleaned my asparagus, I removed the woody parts from the bottom and I'm going to keep the top part like this so that I can cut them separately as they are considerably more tender and they will not require as long to cook. So I just remove the tips from the top and with the remaining parts I'll just chop them roughly into three pieces. I just left the door open to my under the stays face. Last time I did that and I videoed it, Julie spotted it. She said why did you leave the door open? So hopefully she will not spot this video. Anyway, I'm now chopping the remainder of half a leek and I'm going to slice it in little pieces. You can of course also use an onion if you wish. I'm still planning to make pasta of course but not as much as I would have done if I didn't have the brilliant idea to also chop a medium-sized potato. So I will not be using as much pasta, still using some carbohydrates, but not as much. So I'm chopping my potato in little cubes, about one centimetre pieces, just like this. And pasta con i terrumi, the original dish, is quite an interesting one as actually it does require quite a lot of garlic but the way it is cooked you do not really notice it because some will go with the broth but also some will go with a separate sauce. So I'll go a few cloves here. I'll remove the peel for this recipe and then I'll be ready. So I've got five cloves of garlic. The largest one I'm going to slice it in little pieces, about one millimetre circles, and I'll keep this on one side for my sauce. Whereas with these ones here they will be cooking alongside the rest of the vegetables. And I'm going to do something which my mum used to do when we were little. She used to pick a clove and then she would go down with a knife and cut it length way that way and then she would do this way and effectively from each piece she would end up with four pieces of garlic. The reason why I am smiling is because as children we would have a game, obviously this would be floating in our pasta, and we would have a little competition on who would collect the largest number of cloves of garlic. But the winner was always my father because both my sisters they used to join in the game but they never used to eat it. They used to give it to him. So anyway, I guess the garlic. So do not worry that there is at face value a lot of garlic. It will not be that noticeable by the time you eat it because it's going to be cooked. I'll turn my hob on and I'll start by adding a little olive oil at the bottom of a saucepan. I'll start with the garlic first and I'll leave it there for 30 seconds. And with the exception of my asparagus tips I'm going to add all of my chopped vegetables next. Followed by a teaspoon of salt and I will leave everything to sizzle for a couple of minutes. Time to add some water. Now it is important that you do not add too much water but equally well as I will be cooking the pasta in there I want to make sure that I add enough. So as I'm cooking for two people I'm going to put 1.5 liters of water. I know that because my saucepan is going to mark in here 1.5 meters. This is hot water by the way so it will soon reach the boil once again and I will turn it up so that there you go. Asparagus tips I didn't add them earlier because I didn't want to damage them so they can go in now. So I'll place the lid on and I'll turn this off and I'll place it over here. I'll turn the temperature down on to medium and I'll leave it to simmer for about 10 minutes and I can make my sauce next. So a little olive oil at the bottom of a new saucepan and I'm going to find first of all my chopped garlic and it can go. Now wait until it starts sizzling once again and here I'm going to use some cherry tomatoes. These are really sweet or you can also use some fresh tomatoes if you like. If you were to use fresh tomatoes chop them in half so that they release a little bit more juice and I can add them in. Very noisy. To ensure that I use all of my tomato I'm going to pinch a little bit of my water from over there. I'll put it here and there it goes and there it is. I'll place the lid on and leave it to simmer to coincide with the rest of the vegetables. And I'm there. The sauce can go off by the way. 10 minutes and the pasta is ready to go in. So again it'll go inside the stock with all the vegetables. I'm cooking macaroni today. Only 150 grams of potatoes in there. I'll turn the temperature up and I'll leave this to cook until it's totally cooked. Could be al dente or totally up to you. In this particular case when I cook brothy meals I cook it all the way. So the pasta is ready but before I continue I wanted to show you the density of the water. If you take a look it's a little bit denser than just water. That's because the pasta releases starches absorbed with the potatoes and at the same time the pasta also takes on the flavor from all of the stock. So that's the benefit of cooking the pasta in the stock. Now the next step is quite magic because this is where all of the flavor from the tomatoes will marry the rest of my vegetables. And it always reminds me of Sicily because this is such a Sicilian thing to do. But regardless of where you live in the world if you fancy a little bit of summer, Sicilian summer, add some basil and add it at the end. Do not add it whilst you're cooking your pasta. Followed by some olive oil and you can put as little or as much as you like. I think that's enough. So I will now give this one final mix and if I find the lid, here it is, I will leave it now to rest for about a minute and during that time the basil and the olive oil will combine with everything and then we can serve it. If you have never made anything like this and you make it for the first time, by the time you get to this point the smell alone will be something completely different and new for you. Honestly it's so good. It does actually remind genuinely of Sicily in the summer. And there it is, one portion is done. And regardless if you are a meat eater, a vegetarian or vegan, this is one of those dishes that everybody loves because it carries tremendous flavor but also has got so much nutritional value. It's unbelievable. Honestly you should try it if you've never made it. I knew what to expect. It's delicious, so simple and so good for you. Make it and you will know what I mean. Thank you for watching and buon appetito. Ciao ciao!