spaghetti.ai.cucuzzi.e.ricotta

September 11th, 2009

When hearing the name of this recipe: spaghetti ai cucuzzi e ricotta, I think you would not guess that I made it with one very-much-under-estimated vegetable called blonceng :) It is considered such an uninteresting vegetable that people here never really consider that it would pair nicely with pasta, nor that it has another ‘cooler’ Italian name: cucuzzi :) But for me I found it delicious and has a soft and abit sweet taste, I first experiment with cucuzzi (sicilian gourd) when I was in Italy, introduced by Pipo, my Sicilian vegetable seller at my usual tuesday farmer market, making soup and also use the leaves (called tenerumi) to make pasta.

Blonceng is so ridiculously cheap in Indonesia, we usually got one for 3000 rupiah, around 20 euro cents :) plus it is rather big that I could use it to make four times meals for four people. Imagine that! I made gratin two days ago with blonceng and mom was amazed to see this vegetable transformed into something looked…tres chic! :)

What inspire this recipe was that I felt challenged to make this vegetable taste interesting, plus  I happened to have a bit of ricotta I made yesterday and some organic macadamia nuts, and I DO miss good creamy green-ish pasta for lunch :) so I just blitz them together to make the creamy sauce for the spaghetti. It was a GOOD decision :)

(I am making mess, like always…) And just in case anyone has not seen blonceng before:

As well as showing you my humble kitchen in Indonesia :)

So, here is the recipe, I think you can replace blonceng a.k.a cucuzzi a.k.a sicilian gourd with zucchini, but I will suggest you to try to find this vegetable, it has softer taste than zucchini. And just in case someone want Indonesian version of this recipe, just drop me a note and I will write it to you.

It is a easy-simple-yum recipe for lunch, and if you have leftover (I doubt it :), you can just put it in a pyrex, add some boiled vegetables, grated some cheese on top and put it under a grill for 15 minutes, and it would be great for next day’s lunch (one very good thing I learn about Italian is that they really know how to recycle food :)

Spaghetti ai Cucuzzi e Ricotta - Spaghetti with Sicilian Gourd and Ricotta - Spaghetti dengan Blonceng (Labu Air) dan Ricotta

For 4 (normal hungry) or 3 (verrrryyyyy hungry :)

200 gram dried egg pasta

10 cm length (around 200 gram) cucuzzi, quartered and slice 5 mm thick

4 tablespoonful of ricotta

1 medium potato, peel and very thinly sliced

2 green onion, use only the white part, wash and cut into 2 cm length

1 very small garlic, peel

1 handful lightly toasted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

3 tablespoon chopped flat leaves parsley

1 handful of grated parmesan cheese

1 handful of grated pecorino romano cheese (or you can use 2 handful of parmesan cheese)

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil plus extra for drizzling

sea salt and pepper

Boil water in a sauce pan big enough to contain the pasta, when it comes to boil, blanch the cucuzzi, green onion and garlic until slightly cooked (around 5 minutes), drain, bring the water back to boil and add the sliced potato and pasta. Cook the pasta according to the package

In the meantime, put the blanched vegetables, ricotta, chopped macadamia nuts, half part of the parsley, olive oil and the cheese in food processor, blitz until smooth, season to taste with sea salt and pepper

Drain the pasta, reserve an espresso cup of the water

Add the sauce into the pasta, drizzle with abit of olive oil and the remaining of chopped parsley then mix, when the pasta becomes too thick, add the reserved water as necessary.

Divide into plates and drizzle with olive oil, grated parmesan and abit of chopped parsley.

Buon apetito!

filed under: food, paaaaaaaasta