Sagey pumpkin pasta

The sage is going OFF in a pot in the backyard. The leaves are enormous. I haven't done a post for a while, and well.... as much as I do love it, sage doesn't come up that often in the cooking repertoire. There's a kind of piggy-earthy- bitterness to sage that is a little bit full on sometimes and means to me it's just not as versatile as other herbs like basil, parsley, rosemary that get used more regularly in my dishes... But wow, it really is wonderful when it's with the right ingredients. It's crying out desperately to be paired with pork and in this dish I would have loved to add something like proscuitto or pancetta if I'd had any on hand. But hey, it goes fantastically well with pumpkin...  I do love to make a burnt butter sauce, pop the sage leaves in and get them crunchy- then pour the sauce over any kind of pork product, pasta, pumpkin or roasted nuts... orrrrr yeeeah.  

sage, sage, sage

Sagey pumpkin pasta

Ingredients

a few good handfuls of sage leaves

one birds eye chilli

half a pumpkin (I used a JAP I think)- reserve the seeds

almonds

a head of garlic

a block of fetta

olive oil

a packet of large pasta shells

butter (optional - for sage sauce)

Method

Scoop out the pumpkin seeds and reserve. Chop up the pumpkin into about 2-cm chunks. I don't bother to de-skin it. If you have a Steve, get him to do it (I hate chopping pumpkin). Chop the bottom off a whole head of garlic... 

Put the pumpkin chunks into a roasting dish, along with the garlic, have the pumpkin seeds and some of the sage leaves scattered throughout the dish. Season with salt and pepper. Douse it with olive oil. 

The roasting tray goodies

Put in the oven at around 170 C. After 30 minutes or so add the almonds- just scattering them throughout. I didn't really keep track of how long it was in there for so I couldn't be exact, I'd say it was an hour or so? just check it periodically to see how it's coming along. When it's done, squeeze out the garlic from it's shell and discard the shell.

When the pumpkin is looking close to being done, cook up your pasta in a large saucepan of salty water. Drain it when done

Chop up the fetta into about 1 cm cubes and slice up the chilli

in the same saucepan as the pasta was in, fry up some butter and add the rest of the sage (use olive oil instead if you prefer).

Toss all the ingredients together.

Squeeze a little lemon juice on this if you want a little sourness to break up that richness!

Get it while it's hot!

Like I said before - pork would be wonderful with this, add in bacon, proscuitto, pancetta at your leisure :-) 

This was a nicely textured dish, with the softness of the pumpkin, slightly melty cheese, and a nice bit of crunch from the almonds and pumpkin seeds.