Tart London: how to make cavolo nero pasta

Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison serve up a warming bowl of cavolo nero spaghetti
Lucy Carr-Ellison2 March 2017

This recipe was concocted on a freezing cold day recently, one of those days when you hibernate and dream of sunnier times. We were in our basement office not wanting to spend another dreary second outside. With spring still a little way off, what one needs is comfort food, preferably with lots of spice, served piping hot in a bowl with grated cheese.

For us the No 1 comfort food is pasta. Whose isn’t? It’s quick to make and always delicious. We find ourselves eating it most nights of the week.

This is an easy dish, packed full of vitamin-rich greens to keep you Popeye-strong. Better yet, it uses seasonal ingredients. Jemima has been returning from her vegetable patch in Somerset with great big bags of cavolo nero, bagged up frozen straight from the ground. The thick, dark Italian cabbage, also known as Tuscan kale, black cabbage or black kale, is especially versatile, with a wonderfully rich, intense and slightly sweet flavour — delicious in soups or with your Sunday roast when tossed with chilli and garlic.

When it came to Jemima’s stash, we cleaned off all the bugs and rich Somerset soil and brought the smells of a Tuscan kitchen to our underground dwellings: all those wonderful aromas of garlic and of dry chilli, of anchovies and of pasta on the boil. We recommend using good old dried spaghetti for this ­— and of course, plenty of grated Parmesan.

Ingredients - serves 2-6

2 large handfuls cavolo nero

1 large handful purple

sprouting broccoli

100ml good olive oil

5 plump garlic cloves,

thinly sliced

1 tsp dried chilli

5 anchovies

Zest of 2 lemons

Juice of half a lemon

Small bunch parsley, chopped

1 tbsp grated Parmesan

500g spaghetti, cooked to packet instructions

2017 cookbooks - in pictures

1/7

Method

Steam the cavolo nero and broccoli for 3 to 5 minutes, so that the cavolo is tender and the broccoli still has a little crunch. Place the cavolo nero in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Remove and place to one side. Repeat this for the broccoli, then add to the cavolo nero.

Heat a good glug of olive oil in a large pan and slowly fry the garlic on a low heat with the dried chilli, stirring occasionally. When the garlic is golden, add the anchovies and break into fine pieces in the oil. Add the chopped greens and toss through, followed by lemon zest and juice, parsley and Parmesan. Season well and toss in the spaghetti. Serve hot.

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