Al limone. Even quicker comfort food.

Pasta. Again.
Having a husband who wants to eat pasta every single day, I end up cooking pasta quite often. Today, it was pasta al limone – even simpler and with less ingredients than carbonara, most of which I always have at home. That is cream, lemons and garlic. The pasta doesn’t look very spectacular – some might even say boring – but the taste is fantastic. And the biggest plus: the whole meal just takes as long to prepare as the pasta needs to cook. That means: hot dinner in 10 minutes. Try and beat that.

SPAGHETTI AL LIMONE for 2
(recipe adapted from Sophia Loren – yes, the actress!)
250 g pasta (I like spaghetti, linguini or fussili)
2 tbsp butter
1 sprig rosemary
2 cloves garlic
1 lemon
1/2 cup cream (min. 30% fat)
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese to taste

Bring enough water to boil (if you’re in a real hurry, use an electric kettle), add enough salt so that it tastes like sea water and throw in the spaghetti.

Heat up a pan, melt the butter on low heat, then put in the peeled and crushed garlic as well as the rosemary and let it fry on low until it gets a light golden color. In the meantime, cut fillets out of the lemon (or if you’re lazy, just squeeze out the juice).

Pour the cream into the pan, then stir in the lemon fillets/juice. I will thicken up a bit, but it won’t curdle – unless of course, you used anything with less than 30% milk fat in your cream. Come to think of it, that’s not even 1/4 of a cup of cream in this meal per person – one helping of ice cream must contain much more than that.

Back to business: drain the pasta and mix it with the sauce, add salt and pepper to taste. And if you have a nice husband who sets up the table in the meantime, you’re ready to eat. Oh, and don’t forget to sprinkle each plate of pasta with lots of pepper and freshly grated Parmesan…