Blue Cheese and Rocket Pasta

Price I Paid/Ingredients 

1 packet of Rocket £1 (half used for the dish)

1 Packet of 150g Galbani Dolcelatte Classico which is a very soft blue Italian cheese £2 click here to buy.  You could make this with a harder blue cheese but it might be much more difficult to melt and you would probably need to add more cream.

Roughly 5 tablespoons of thick whipping/double cream 70p

Ground nutmeg 1 teaspoon.  Whole jar retails at £2.

2 teaspoons olive oil

Tagliatelle 1 large pack 80p 

2 saucepans

Optional: lemon juice

The whole dish for 4 people probably cost around £6

How to Prepare/Cook (about 10 mins altogether)

1. Put the water in a large saucepan and put on a high heat. Once boiling, add the tagliatelle.  It is a good idea to use a thicker pasta such as this because the sauce is very strong and you want a bit of substance to the pasta itself, spaghetti etc would not be as tasty but you could still use it.  The pasta should take about 10 minutes to cook but look at the packaging for instructions.  Make the sauce while it is cooking.

2. In a small saucepan, add two teaspoons of olive oil and turn the heat up to a reasonably high setting e.g gas mark 8.

3. Then turn the heat down to about gas mark 5 and add the entire block of blue cheese to the pan. 

4. After about 20 seconds add the 5 tablespoons of cream.  Add more/less depending on how thick you want the sauce to be. Continuously stir the mix with a fork to break down the cheese and if you need to turn down the heat to stop the cheese burning on the pan as it should melt at quite a low temperature.

5. Add the teaspoon of nutmeg and squeeze half a lemon over it if you wish.

6. You need to act pretty quick once the sauce is done as it starts sticking to the saucepan as soon as it is taken off the heat.  I recommend leaving it on gas mark 1 while you sieve and serve the pasta into the bowls.  Put a good handful of rocket onto each bowl of pasta and finally pour on the sauce.  The rocket should be cold because it gives the pasta a lovely texture to stop it feeling so stodgy.

7.Serve!

Colour

The sauce is an off white colour and so is the pasta, the green rocket really lifts the dish to make it more colourful and exciting.  Rocket is also really pretty as the edges of the leaves are quite dainty looking!

Taste

If you don't like strong blue cheese, this is not the dish for you! However, if you are like me and absolutely love blue cheese then you should definitely try making this as it is really quick, tasty and simple to make.

Smell

A big drawback to this dish is that if you hate the smell of cheese you probably won't want to cook this in your own kitchen.  My mum actually complained about the smell as soon as she walked in the door from work.  She blamed my dad for having really smelly shoes at first but after a while she realised it was actually my cooking.  Having said that, if you can put up with the smell this dish is so yummy it is definitely worth it.

Overall Reaction

I had never really made this dish before but it was incredibly quick and easy to make so I will certainly be recreating it in the near future.

10/10