Pasta
Traditionally this is is made with short pasta shapes, think rigatoni, penne, farfalle but sometimes I just crave the twirling of spaghetti round a fork and I don’t like the rules of what pasta shape you should use for which sauce. You know in Italy they never eat spaghetti bolognaise? They traditionally serve the bolognaise sauce with tagliatelle. So my point is, to each their own and use what you’ve got which is what I’m all about.

But Margie I hate broccoli!
First of all what?! How can you hate broccoli? But second of all, that’s okay, we can’t all like the same things. If you don’t like broccoli this might not be for you. But the good news is you can use all sorts of greens for this, kale, romanesco would be v good, cavolo, nero, swiss chard. With those I would wilt them in the water, and then do the following steps as written in the recipe but then I would blitz it to a lovely green sauce with a little of the parmesan and pasta water added before stirring it through the cooked pasta. This is a VERY good courgette pasta if you fancy that instead.

Pasta water
The pasta water is the key. It brings it all together and the starch in the water makes a little sauce with the broccoli, olive oil and parmesan. Make sure you salt your pasta water generously, I tell you to salt it before you put the broccoli in because green veg also love salty water too and by using the same water for both the broccoli and the pasta you a) save on washing up which you know I love and we are also b.) just layering in flavour at every chance we get.

In a hurry? Like a real hurry hurry?
Okay so this recipe is pretty speedy as it is, it doesn’t take long at all but if you wanted to really speed things up, here’s a top tip, get your salted water on to boil. Add the pasta and the broccoli at the same time. Once the broccoli is cooked, scoop it out and leave the pasta to finish cooking. Then do as it says in the recipe over a slightly higher heat and finish the pasta off in the pan as the recipe says. Phew.

Anchovies
This is also often made with anchovies, which you would just melt into the olive oil before you add the garlic. A lovely variation but not for everyone as I know some people don’t love them. I would say this doesn’t make the dish taste fishy, so you don’t need to worry about that, it more just adds a hint of umami.

Servings
This serves 4 because of the quantity of the pasta used, so if feeding less use less pasta but I would actually leave everything else the same. You can’t have too much of a good thing in my opinion and the more sauce the merrier.

Hope you all have a brilliant week ahead and