This penne with hazelnut sauce is the perfect balance of savoury, creamy and nutty. Penne al dente tossed with a lovely creamy hazelnut sauce is sure to become your new favourite pasta dish. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans, too.
Pasta is a traditional food of Italian cuisine. Because I used to live on the border to Italy I learned a lot about pasta; how to make it and how to cook it. It’s especially relevant that the pasta is cooked “al dente”; not raw or overcooked. No need to learn how to eat it, right?
There are also hundreds of different forms and thousands of different names. Since I have a lot of friends in Italy, I know that almost in every region they use a different name for the same form of pasta.
Moreover, they have made the whole bunch of rules about food, eating and drinking; also regarding pasta. For instance, there is a kind of a rule which pasta goes with what sauce.
As I mentioned I decided to go for penne. Penne are the short pasta with the hollow centre. I chose the “penne rigate”. These are the ones with ridges so that they can hold the sauce better. And following the rule, the sauce will be a thick one; perfect for penne rigate.
This dish is quick to prepare. You can do the sauce at the same time when the pasta is cooking. And, this sauce is just amazing. It has a pesto-like texture, with a creamy coconut note and a hint of mandarine. What a treat this is for hazelnut lovers. However, you can also use almonds, walnuts or cashews.
When you are still not convinced about this recipe, you might check one of these pasta dishes: the stunning pumpkin black spaghetti, the beautiful lingua della suocera, the amazing tagliatelle with mortadella ragù, the wintry camembert-pear farfalle pasta, the colourful autumn leaves pasta or the classic mac’n’cheese.
Ingredients for about 3 portions of penne with hazelnut sauce:
- 200 g whole-grain penne
- 1 clove of garlic (chopped)
- 2 Tsp of olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 200 g ground hazelnuts
- 150 ml of orange juice (fresh)
- 2-3 mandarines (juice and zest)
- 200 ml of coconut milk
- small bunch of parsley
Take a deep pot, put in some water to boil and add a pinch of salt. At the same time prepare the hazelnut sauce. In a larger frying pan, preheat some olive oil. Once the oil gets hot, add the chopped garlic and stir until softened.
When the water starts boiling, put the penne in. Cook for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, continue with the sauce. As next, add the mandarine zest and stir in the hazelnuts. After a minute, pour in the orange juice and squeeze in the mandarine juice as well.
Cook for a couple of minutes, until half of the liquids is evaporated. Last but not least, stir in the coconut milk, season and cook on medium-low until thick. Don’t forget to stir from time to time. In case you think the sauce needs more liquids, you can easily add more orange juice.
Finally, it is time to serve penne with hazelnut sauce. You can either toss the pasta in the sauce or put the sauce on top of it. Only when served, add some fresh parsley leaves.
Enjoy!
PS
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