tortellini with nutty herb sauce.

I believe I've mentioned that I come from a very Italian family, which means that we serve up pasta every single Sunday. Now don't get me wrong. I love pasta. But isn't it nice to do something with pasta besides just pouring a little tomato sauce on it? I recently got a new cookbook called Vegetarian: Tasty Recipes for Every Day, which has lots of tasty-looking pasta recipes in it. One Sunday, I decided to give the following a try.


the recipe
500 g (1 lb) cheese tortellini or ravioli
60 g (2 oz) butter
100 g (3 1/2 oz) walnuts, chopped
100 g (3 1/2 oz) pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
1/4 cup ricotta cheese
3 tablespoons cream


1. Cook the pasta in rapidly boiling water until al dente. Drain and return to the pan.
2. Heat the butter in a heavy-based pan until foaming. Add the walnuts and pine nuts and stir for 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Add the parsley, thyme and salt and pepper.
3. Beat the ricotta with the cream. Toss the sauce and pasta together and top with ricotta cream. Serve immediately.


substitutions
I don't typically buy tortellini or ravioli, so I just used plain rigatoni. I also did not have pine nuts, so I used some extra walnuts, and just a few cashews as well.


great with
Of course, pasta stands well on its own. However, I always love to have my pasta with a salad.


the review
I think the best way I can describe this dish is by outlining what I was thinking as I took my first few bites of this dish:
1st bite: Hmm, this is unusual.
2nd bite: It's not bad though.
3rd bite: It's actually pretty good.
4th bite: I think I burned the nuts.


This definitely has a different taste to it. I've never had pasta with a nut flavor before, and it's very interesting. I can definitely see why this is meant to be served with tortellini or ravioli--I think it really needs the cheese in those pastas to make the dish complete. I'm sure I'll be making this again, and I'll be using tortellini or ravioli next time I do.


And I won't burn the nuts next time either.