PASTA WITH BROCCOLI & OOZY CHEESE SAUCE

When Jamie Oliver first came on the scene, I was pretty obsessed with his cookbooks. I think I bought them all and cooked about one recipe if that - I mainly just looked at the pictures! Fast forward 10 years and whilst I still like Jamie, I never buy his books anymore for the simple reason that his recipes always require so many ingredients and so many herbs. His latest book is based around super foods and balanced eating and a friend of mine bought it so I photographed a few recipes including this pasta recipe. The recipe was quick and easy to make and took about 20 minutes in total. Jamie suggests you make your own pasta but I bought mine!

Ingredients for 4 people:

400g pasta such as spaghetti or tagliatelle
250ml creme fraiche 
150g sliced fontina or another nice melting cheese (I used mozzarella)
150g Parmesan, finely grated
400g purple sprouting broccoli, cut into bite size pieces (I just used normal broccoli)
2 large egg yolks
A small bunch of fresh herbs such as thyme, marjoram or oregano (I used some dried oregano and fresh thyme - not pictured)
Salt and pepper

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. In a bowl, large enough to rest on the top of the saucepan, mix together the creme fraiche, the Parmesan, the melting cheese such as mozzarella or fontina and season. Place the bowl on top of the pan so that the cheese melts. Mine took about 15 minutes and I occasionally gave it a stir.

While this is cooking bring another pan of salted boiling water to boil for your pasta and cut the broccoli into bite size pieces - mine were far too big to eat!

Depending on how long your pasta takes, put it on so it is ready for when your cheese melts. Mine took 8 minutes.

Finally in a separate pan of boiling water, cook the broccoli for the final 3 minutes so this is also ready around the same time.

In a little bowl, mix the egg yolk with the herbs.

When the cheese is melted, mix in the egg and herbs.

Drain the broccoli and pasta but reserve some of the pasta water just in case you need it to loosen your sauce - I didn't.

Combine the pasta, cheese and broccoli. Taste and season if necessary - mine needed quite a bit of seasoning.

Sprinkle with some extra Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil and eat immediately.

Arabella enjoyed this as she loves cheese and broccoli although she would have preferred me to use goats cheese to mozzarella. I wasn't a huge fan as broccoli isn't my favourite vegetable, I would prefer this with mushrooms but that would be Arabella's idea of food hell! I was expecting more from a Jamie Oliver recipe but maybe I should have used more fresh herbs, I just find that I end up buying bunches of herbs that I then throw away….much better in the summer when we can grow them ourselves.

Anyway a nice recipe and a good way to get kids to eat their greens!