Penne Pasta with White Broccoli sauce

I recently watched Jamie’s Save with Jamie on television, in which he cooked a dish – roasted cauliflower and broccoli with cheese. I really liked his idea of cooking the white sauce with broccoli and later blending it to form a thick sauce. I thought I can do the same with pasta and made it last weekend. It turned out pretty tasty and only thing missing in it was parmesan, well I didn’t have it so I couldn’t use it, but the dish was really delicious and this is a very good variation from the regular tomato-based pasta.

Ingredients:

Pasta – 2 cups (I used penne)

Butter/oil – 2 tbsp

All-purpose flour/maida – ¼ cup

Milk – 1 ½ + ½ cup, divided

Broccoli – ½ cup (fresh or frozen)

Garlic cloves – 2 (finely chopped)

Red chili flakes – ½ tsp, optional

Dry bread crumbs/soy granules – 1 tbsp, for topping

Roasted nuts – 1 tbsp, optional (roughly chopped)

Salt – to taste

Pepper powder – 1 tsp

Procedure:

1. Boil about 4-5 cups of water in a large vessel. Add a pinch of salt and ½ tsp oil to it. This will prevent the pasta from sticking together.
2. Add the pasta and cook for about 10 minutes. Make sure that you do not completely cook the pasta. Cook till it is 85-90% done.
3. Strain the pasta and keep aside for now.
4. Heat oil in a deep-pan and add the oil/butter, red chili flakes and garlic. Saute for a minute.
5. Then add the all-purpose flour and give a good mix. Add 1 ½ cups milk and mix well till a smooth sauce is formed.
6. Add the broccoli, salt to taste and cook covered till the broccoli is cooked. Let it cool.
7. Once the mixture cools down, blend it to get a smooth sauce. Add ½ cup milk if the sauce is too thick.
8. Into the same pan used previously, add the sauce, pepper and let it come to one boil. Add the penne to this and remove from heat.
9. Serve it with a topping of bread crumbs and roasted nuts to give a good crunch.

Note:

1. You may add more broccoli in the vegetable form along with pasta for a good contrast. In that case cook the broccoli along with pasta in the boiling water itself.
2. You may add any more vegetables you want to this pasta.
3. If you have parmesan cheese, add it to the pasta before serving.

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