A Simple Healthy Dinner: Spaghetti with Cauliflower and Coppa

 

We're back! Bryan's been out this week at jury duty, doing his civic duty, so it's been a bit difficult for us to be cooking and posting. We're very sorry about that, and to make it up to you, we're giving away a special prize tomorrow, so check back then for details. Today though, while we're coming to the end of cauliflower season, we have a great, simple pasta dish that makes use of this vasty underrated vegetable.

We were skeptical when making this dish - it's hard to get excited about cauliflower. But by giving them a nice caramelization and tossing it with a salty cured meat and pasta, it actually ended up being really good. So if you're up for it, read on to learn how to make this tasty little dish.

Making the Dish

What You'll Need
1/3 lb spaghetti or other long noodle
3 oz coppa or other cured meat (prosciutto, etc), sliced into strips
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 cup tomato sauce
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp grated pecorino romano
salt and pepper to taste

In a non stick pan, heat up the olive oil over medium heat. Once it's nice and hot, add in the cauliflower and a touch of salt, and start cooking the cauliflower. Cook it for about 8 - 10 minutes until it is nice and soft and slightly caramelized.

Once the cauliflower is nice, soft, and golden, add in the tomato sauce and toss everything together. Let simmer until the tomato sauce is cooked through. Then, remove from heat. Start cooking the spaghetti in lightly salted water. Cook until 1 minute shy of the package directions.

Ladle a little bit of the pasta water into the cauliflower sauce and bring up the heat to high. Add in the spaghetti and toss in the coppa and pecorino romano. Add in a touch of the pepper and toss everything together to combine, until the pasta has absorbed most of the liquid. Enjoy!











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