April 15 - Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe, Toasted Garlic and Bread Crumbs

This week Mark introduced me to a new ingredient from the produce aisle – broccoli rabe. I’m a fan of broccoli and of bitter greens, so I don’t know why I didn’t try rabe before. The preparation was fairly easy, and I liked the final dish. I still like chard better, but the rabe will be a good back-up.

I’m back in DC this week, so there was no problem with this ingredient list:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, more as needed
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and slivered
1 cup bread crumbs, preferably homemade
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
About 1 pound broccoli rabe, trimmed and washed
1 pound spaghetti, linguine or other long pasta
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

There wasn’t a ton of prep for this dish. I followed Mark’s instructions and made my own bread crumbs (once again using my handy dandy Magic Bullet blender). After that, all I had to do was slice the garlic and trim the rabe, and I was ready to go.

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. Put 1/4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. When oil is warm, cook garlic just until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add bread crumbs and red pepper flakes and cook until bread crumbs are golden, 5 minutes or so. Remove and set aside.

Pretty easy. The garlic smelled wonderful, and I got a nice golden brown on the bread crumbs. But I wonder about the instruction to add red pepper flakes “to taste” in the middle of a preparation. You can’t really taste the recipe at that point. Even with something spicy like red pepper, there’s enough additional preparation that I wouldn’t really be able to tell whether it would be too mild or too hot in the end, so I just added the amount suggested.

2. Cook broccoli rabe in boiling water until it is soft, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain well and chop. Cook pasta in same pot.

3. Meanwhile, add remaining oil to skillet over medium-low heat. Add broccoli rabe and toss well; sprinkle with salt and pepper. When it is warm add garlic and bread crumbs and mix well.

At this point, I made the mistake of putting the rabe in the skillet right after I put the pasta in the pot. Why was this a mistake? Well, it didn’t take 6 minutes to heat & toss the rabe, but it did take 6 minutes to finish the pasta. I decided not to let the bread crumbs get soggy in that time, so I didn’t add the garlic & bread crumbs mixture at this point.

4. When pasta is done, drain it, reserving a little cooking water. Toss pasta in skillet with broccoli rabe mixture, moistening with a little reserved water if necessary. Adjust seasonings and serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

To finish this off, I tossed the pasta with the rabe in the skillet. Then I topped the individual servings with the garlic & bread crumb mixture and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. Here’s the final product:



Overall, this was a nice weekday dinner. There was a good mixture of textures, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes from start to finish. I can imagine using the same basic preparation with different bitter greens and perhaps serving it with a side of grilled chicken.