Beetroot Pasta
The real reason I wanted to do this pasta was not because I love beetroot, but I wanted to have beautiful pink red pasta and of course I wanted the pink hands too 🙂
If you are a lover of beetroot give this pasta a try, I think it looks beautiful and especially for this time of year.
Give the beetroot a little stir every now and again while it is cooking. Â Remember that the beetroot will take 40 minutes in the oven so I would start cooking my onions and warming up my pasta water when the beetroot has about 15 – 20 minutes left to cook.
If you can’t get penne any other pasta will do, it will still look like stunning.
I hope you enjoy.
(Recipe adapted from Jack Monroe – A Year in 120 Recipes)
Beetroot Pasta
Ingredients
- 250 g Beetroot roughly cut into 1cm cubes
- 1 tablespoon runny honey
- pinch of chilly flakes
- 2 1/2 tablespoons oil
- 100 g mascarpone
- 180 g penne pasta
- 1 red onion finely diced
- 60 g parmesan cheese grated
- 20 g walnuts roughly chopped
- handful of fresh parsley roughly chopped
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C
- Place the prepared beetroot into a roasting dish, add the honey, 2 tablespoons of oil, chilly flakes and a little salt, mix it all together so the beetroot in nicely coated. Place it in the oven and cook for 40 minutes until the beetroot is soft and slightly charred.
- In a medium pan at the rest of the oil and then cook the onions until soft.
- Bring a medium pot of salted water to the boil.
- Cook the pasta as per the instructions but remove it for the water 1 to 2 minutes before the pasta is ready (save a bit of the water).
- Once the beetroot is cooked, blitz it up with a hand blender (making sure you keep all the juices), add the mascarpone and 2 tablespoons of the pasta water and blitz it again so it is all mixed together.
- Add the beetroot mixture to the pan with the onion and warm it up on a medium heat, add the cooked pasta and finish off cooking the pasta in the pan with the beetroot mixture, slowly mixing and incorporating the parmesan cheese (if it is looking a bit dry add a bit of the pasta water) season with salt and pepper.
- When the pasta is finished and ready to serve sprinkle over the parsley and the walnuts.