Quick Dinners: Albanian Inspired Pasta Coating
The best part of this Albanian inspired pasta coating is that you can use fresh ingredients or dried herbs to create two great tastes.
In Albania pasta is normally coated in a homemade pasta coating of butter (gjalpë) and eaten plain. This butter melts over the pasta and therefore keeps it moist. We don’t use much pasta sauce while we are there and as much as I like pasta with butter, it can become a little ‘Boring’. Therefore I’ve created my own coating using a few ingredients to give my pasta some punch.
Fresh Ingredients
To make this coating for the pasta you will need:
- 10 Plum Tomatoes
- 1 Onion – finely diced
- Handful of Basil leafs – chopped
- Handful of Parsley – chopped
- 1/2 tsp ground Sea Salt
- 1/2 tsp ground Black Pepper
- 1/4 tsp Chilli Flakes
- 2 tbps Oil Olive
- 300ml Water
Place all the ingredient into a deep saucepan (I prefer a Saute pan) excluding the water and fry for 2 minutes. Add the water and leave on a simmer for 15 minutes stirring every now and again.
Cook your pasta as you normally would (I use boiling salty water for 15 minutes) – i find this works really well with spaghetti too.
Once the pasta is cooked, mix in a little butter and then add the sauce. Mix well to ensure all the pasta is coated and serve into bowls.
Dried Herbs
- 2 tsp Dried Basil
- 2 tsp Dried Parsley
- 1/2 tsp ground Sea Salt
- 1/2 tsp ground Black Pepper
- 1/2 tsp ground garlic
- 1/4 tsp Chilli Flakes
- 2 tbps Oil Olive
- 300ml Water
Follow the same recipe method as above.
To add some texture to the pasta why not try added some Albanian Salami? Add it from the start (recommend 10cm diced) but remove the chilli from the ingredient list, otherwise it becomes a little too spicy!
