When I’m on my own, as I’ve mentioned here before, I tend to eat things the ABO isn’t keen on. Occasionally I’ll eat a big meal at lunchtime and then have crackers and cheese or beans on toast. Last night, I was hungry, tired and the fridge was almost empty (we’re due a ‘big shop’) so we were out of my go to quick meal of eggs on toast. What I did have was some leftover cream and some lemons. Not what you would think would make the main basis of a meal. I’ve had this recipe in the back of my mind for a while having made it a few times 2 summers ago. I make no bones about owning it; in fact a quick search reveals the smitten kitchen has beaten me to it by some time…usually I add some peas but we are out of those too. It’s easy to scale up or down. It would be delicious with other green vegetables especially asparagus. In brief, here’s what I did…
Boil the spaghetti or tagliatelle (or other pasta…I’ve done this with fusilli and penne, but a long thin pasta works best). Whilst this is cooking, zest and juice a medium sized lemon (I used 2 slightly shrivelled small ones- I also heated them in microwave for 10secs to get more juice), grate a good handful of parmesan cheese and roughly chop some herbs…today I used basil as that’s what I had handy, although thyme works well too.
When cooked drain the pasta. Gently heat the cream (a good glug per person) in the same saucepan, add in the lemon zest and half of the juice. Return the spaghetti to the pan stir through the sauce, add a little water to slacken if you need to (Smitten Kitchen reserves some pasta water but I always forget this!) stir through the parmesan cheese. Add more lemon juice to your taste (I didn’t need to). Add lots of black pepper. Grate on even more parmesan cheese. Serve to yourself on a tray in front of some mindless TV and remember just in time to take a photo on your phone in very poor light
