Broccoli pasta with peppermint

During one of my journey in the endlessly-seeming list of foodblogs and different recipe-sites, I somewhere found the idea to pair peppermint, orange and lemon and use them all together in a pasta dish. Sounded like fun, so I decided to try. Unfortunately I was in a mood for this dish on the very day I did not have any fresh mint leaves at hand. So here’s what I did – I substituted the leaves with peppermint tea. Just made a strong cupful using regular Lipton tea and poured it into the sauce.

You might want to be careful with the orange rind, as in case you add too much of it, you’ll end up with a rather bitter sauce and there’s nothing you can do to fix it…so be careful. And what else…I guess you can play around with the veggies, but I would recommend some mild-flavored vegetables such as broccoli, as you need something which taste wouldn’t overpower the fresh marriage of lemon and peppermint.

Serves two:

• 200 g pasta (penne, rotini, farfalle)
• 200 ml cream
• 200 ml chicken broth
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 gloves of garlic, crushed
• olive oil
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 100 g chopped broccoli florets
• 1 tsp grated orange rind
• 2 tsp grated lemon rind
• 50 ml strong peppermint tea (or a handful of fresh peppermint leaves)
• 1 tbsp flour
• 4 slices of prosciutto
• grated Parmesan (optional)

# Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and fry onion and garlic until translucent.

# Add chicken broth and cream into the saucepan and continue simmering for 5 minutes. Add chili powder together with the grated lemon and orange rind. Stir, and also add broccoli florets into the sauce.

# Mix hot peppermint tea with flour (avoid lumps). While stirring the sauce, pour the tea-and-flour-mix carefully into the sauce. Continue simmering until broccoli florets are soft enough for you (I don’t like them very mushy, so 10 minutes was enough for me).

# In the mean time prepare the pasta (in a water seasoned with salt). When cooked, drain and pour over with some olive oil, stir to coat. Then pour the pasta into the sauce, stir carefully and serve immediately (otherwise the pasta will suck all the sauce in it and you’ll end up with super-sized pasta and no sauce).

# When serving, you may want to top the pasta with some prosciutto and grated Parmesan.

Peppermint is undoubtedly the most important ingredient of this dish – without that it would be the same old creamy pasta…Very fresh, delicate and filling at the same time. Although I had a feeling that J made some faces while eating it (you can tell if one truly enjoys the dish or doesn’t)…I guess he was trying to figure out where did all this peppermint and freshness of this dish came, as there were no visible mint leaves…but in any case, he did finish the plateful and told me it was delicious. Well trained, all I can say.