This dish was originally created by the lovely Sarah Jampel and packs a whole lot of flavour into a pantry ingredients dish. I did a little spin on this to make this dish a bit more flexible to what you might have in your pantry, as we didn't have some of the ingredients for her version at home. Which I think is often the case with dishes that are meant to use cans and oddments at the back of your cupboard.
For this time of year this dish is perfect for warming you up but also has a lot of fresh zingy notes of lemon, garlic and fresh herbs perfect for these early Spring days of the year. Plus if you have herbs growing in your garden or kitchen window sill we will be using those too!
Ingredients
4 servings
120g plus 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for drizzling
130g of walnuts, finely chopped
½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes I used Gochugaru as it was in the pantry
5 garlic cloves, 1 whole, 4 thinly sliced
2 sprigs rosemary from the garden or shops
2 400g (with water) cans cannellini beans, butter beans, borlotti or black beans drained and rinsed
340g of the pasta of your choice, we used Campanelle from Pastaio A Mano
Kosher salt
1 lemon
2 Tbsp. finely chopped parsley from the garden, window sill or shops
Freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Heat 60 ml of oil into a heavy pot or cast iron pan heavy pot. Add walnuts and red pepper flakes and cook, make sure to keep stirring to cook evenly, until nuts are deeply golden. This will take about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and grate in a whole garlic clove, set the bowl aside for topping your pasta later.
- Wipe the pot clean and add 120g of olive oil and the remaining sliced garlic into the pot and cook over medium-low heat. Stir occasionally, until the garlic is starting to brown which will take about 5 minutes. Bruise the rosemary by crushing it in your hand and add to pot along with beans and stir to combine. Increase the heat to medium and cook, stir occasionally until beans are just beginning to take on colour, about 3 minutes.
- Whilst the beans are cooking, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling well salted water until very al dente, about 2 minutes less than package directions. As the pasta will cook more in the next step.
- Take 230ml or 1 Cup of pasta cooking liquid and pour into the pot with beans. Using a wooden spoon, gently mash about three-quarters of beans into a creamy sauce.
- Take out an extra 230ml or 1 Cup of pasta water and drain pasta. Transfer to pot with beans and pour in pasta liquid as well as 2 Tbsp of olive oil. Increase heat to medium-high, bring to a simmer to cook ingredients through, stirring gently with a heatproof spatula, until sauce coats pasta, about 2 minutes. Don't worry if the sauce is runny it will thicken as it sits. Zest a quarter of a lemon, then chop in half and squeeze juice of half a lemon into pot. Lastly add chopped parsley and combine.
- Serve up Pasta into bowls and now it's time to add all the toppings. Drizzle with olive oil, few cracks of black pepper, and top with toasted nut mixture. Slice remaining lemon half into wedges and place in each bowl to serve.
