Pasta Nicoise is Amazeballs!

As the Hubs and I are new parents to an amazing little girl, we have to work a little harder to keep the spark alive. We have established a Saturday night date night and we either do takeout or cook something special and watch a movie (I look forward to this more than you can even imagine each week!). This week, we decided to cook a recipe that I have had bookmarked for a long time and have been dying to make. It's a riff on salad nicoise which is something the Hubs and I both really enjoy.  The variation is that the meal is served hot as a pasta instead of a salad. You omit the potatoes as the pasta is your starch, and the hard boiled egg gets skipped because I think it would just taste weird with pasta. 

In the cooking process

I got this recipe from a chef on the Today Show, and it was phenomenal!  Great flavor, not overly saucy, excellent flavor. The roasted tomatoes are perfectly juicy and delicious. I will admit that I substituted kalamata olives because I couldn't find nicoise olives. This recipe is also great because everything but the tomatoes and the butter are pantry items so I can keep them around for any length of time. 

The Hubs was an awesome helper on this one and I would DEFINITELY make it again. Soooooo good.  The recipe is below:

 Recipe: Spaghetti Niçoise with tuna

Andrew Carmellini

Ingredients

2 pints cherry tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise

Extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

1/4 cup sliced red onion

1 lb. spaghetti

1 jar confit tuna in olive oil

1 cup Niçoise olives, cut in half length-wise

1/4 cup capers

1/2 cup sweet roasted red peppers, chopped

Dried Sicilian oregano

2 tbsp. anchovy paste

1 tbsp. lemon zest

1 tbsp. butter

1/4 cup toasted bread crumbs

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Preparation

1) Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, dress the tomato halves lightly in olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread them out evenly, with lots of room around each one, onto a baking sheet, and roast them in the oven until they're caramelized and very soft, about 30 minutes. Set a large pot of salted water boiling for the spaghetti.

2) In a large sauté pan, sweat the sliced red onion in olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add the blistered tomatoes, the jar of tuna and it's olive oil, the olives, capers, peppers, oregano and anchovy paste and mix together over the heat to incorporate.

3) When the pasta is al dente, lift it into the Niçoise sauce, allowing some of the pasta water to cling to the pasta and make its way into the pan. Toss the noodles into the sauce to coat them, add the lemon zest and the butter, and stir together again.

4) Plate the pasta and garnish with toasted breadcrumbs and parsley over the top.

Serving Size

Makes 4 to 6 servings