Exciting news! Recently the wonderful culinary community of Instagram welcomed me to join a recipe swap club. What a great idea from Kay from the Supper Club Mag and an inspiring way to start autumn. Once every two weeks I’m challenged to get messy with a surprise recipe and share my experience here. Tina from Love is in My Tummy won the first draw & here we are – looking a bit deeper into this vegetarian pasta that I prepared for lunch.
Chili Garlic Pasta w/ Curried Breadcrumbs
First of all I love Tina’s philosophy behind the recipe – creating from bare essentials and a half empty pantry. What I love even more is the core of this beautiful dish – those breadcrumbs are clever little agents of flavour let me tell you. Conveniently enough to get started, I found few heel bits of a homemade loaf. I also had spaghetti, cilantro in the garden, chili that I just dried from our own greenhouse the other week and a lemon. Rarely out of lemons as I always stack them when doing organic groceries.
Another thing I have in the house for this kind of urgent ‘pasta for one situations’ is pecorino or similar. From this background I must admit that I was a bit suspicious that the ingredients list did not include cheese. But I can safely say – no need for cheese here. The curried bread crumbs bring the extra kick & work well together with sautéed garlic and jalopeños. Add chili flakes, cilantro and a touch of lemon to your liking. The only thing different in my portion in comparison to the recipe is red onion which I replaced with shallot.
Now tasting these ingredients in your mind as you read them you might think – as did I – is this pasta or noodles. It’s neither as she states and this kind of creativity in the kitchen is more than welcome here too. Tina designed the recipe for one person but I prepared double. Vegetarian food is not my strongest area in home cooking and I use every opportunity to learn more and get some variety next to soups I normally rely on.
The breadcrumbs are genius use of dried bread and I’m going to play with them again for sure. To try this recipe next week for a relaxed lunch or dinner, jump over to Tina’s blog here. To see everyone’s experiences & photographs of the biweekly recipe challenge, follow along #acommonplate #plateincommon on Instagram.
I’m absolutely thrilled and honoured to be part of a group of so talented recipe magicians and food photographers. Altogether it’s going to be 15 challenges and by the end of January I’ve travelled the world with these flavours. Come along! I would love to see and hear your experience with the curried breadcrumbs!
Saara