This is a super-quick pasta recipe which uses tagliatelle or fettuccine (it doesn’t work quite so well with spaghetti because of the pieces of tomato). What makes it quick is the tapenade – a ready-made sauce effectively. And it’s the tapenade which makes it a bit different.
If you have any tapenade left over use it to make crostini. (Go here for more on crostini).
tagliatelle with tapenade and baby plum tomatoes
Serves – 4
Ingredients
- 400g/14 oz tagliatelle
- 300g/10 oz baby plum tomatoes – cut into quarters. use the tomato knife
- 2 jars (180g/6 oz) tapenade (aka black olive paste) – Belazu is really good. Otherwise go here for a recipe to make it)
- 110g/4 oz bag of rocket or watercress; or an endive or two
- 1 block (200g/7 oz) of feta, crumbled
- salt (go easy on the salt until the end until you have tasted as the feta and tapenade are both very salty) and pepper
- lots of olive oil
- grated parmesan for those who think ALL pasta should have parmesan (not really needed as both the tapenade and the feta have strong tastes of their own
- some fried sage leaves might go rather nicely with this
Instructions
- Cook the tagliatelle in the normal way in a big saucepan.
- Fry the tomatoes in a little oil, and add the tapenade for a minute or two to get it warm.
- Take the frying pan off the heat and add the feta, to get that warm.
- Drain the tagliatelle, and return to the saucepan with a good slug of olive oil.
- Shred the watercress or rocket, or thinly slice the endive… keep a little back for garnish. Add the shredded or sliced green leaves, and all the other ingredients except the Parmesan and sage leaves.
- Garnish with the fried sage leaves (or just snip some over if you are in a rush).
- Serve the parmesan separately for people to help themselves – it is not really necessary.