The other day, while grocery shopping, I found some beautiful pak choi (Chinese cabbages) and couldn’t resist. I love them so much, but unfortunately, I don’t often see them on the shelves, so I took the opportunity right away. Usually, I prepare them in the oven or simply sautéed in a pan, but this time I wanted something different. So I thought of a pasta with a spicy aroma and a slightly unusual taste; a pasta that would solve the ‘lunch dilemma’ in one go. Want to know how it turned out? It resulted in a simple, genuine vegan/vegetarian main dish, ready in about half an hour and truly surprising: my pasta with pak choi and crunchy chickpeas. Here you have the sweetness of the vegetables, the warm and slightly spicy note of curry and turmeric, and the crunchiness of the legumes. In short, a few ingredients that pair perfectly. To make everything creamier, I blended a couple of tablespoons of chickpeas with a bit of water and added them to the pan: a little trick that allowed me to bind the pasta without using cream, yogurt, or various cheeses. A recipe to save if you love experimenting with seasonal vegetables and if you like contrasting textures (soft, creamy, and crunchy) but especially if you’re lucky enough to find pak choi.
Other recipes with pak choi that might interest you:
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Economical
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4 People
- Cooking methods: Boiling, Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter
Ingredients for the Pasta with Pak Choi
- 12 oz pasta (any shape)
- 1 cup canned chickpeas (drained weight)
- 2 pak choi (about 12 oz)
- curry
- ground turmeric
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt
- black pepper
Tools
- 1 Strainer
- 1 Pot
- 1 Pan
- 1 Frying pan
- 1 Immersion blender
- 1 Colander
Preparation of the Pasta with Pak Choi
Drain the chickpeas from the preservation liquid and rinse them under running water. Then dry them well, patting them with kitchen paper. Take out 1.7 oz of chickpeas and set them aside. We’ll use them later to make the cream.
In a frying pan, heat a couple of tablespoons of oil before adding the remaining chickpeas. Season them with salt, pepper, curry, and turmeric. All these ingredients can be dosed to taste depending on personal preference. Cook them until they are golden and crunchy: it will take about 10 to 15 minutes. Stir them often and, once cooked, set them aside.
Remove the base of the pak choi, wash them thoroughly, then separate the leaves from the stems.
Cut the stems into small pieces and the leaves into strips. It’s necessary to keep them separate because the stems cook more slowly.
In a large pan, sauté a clove of garlic. I kept it whole and removed it at the end of cooking, but you can finely chop it, if you prefer. Add a bit of curry and a bit of turmeric and let them toast for a few seconds, then add the chopped pak choi stems and cook them for 3 minutes, stirring often.
At this point, add the sliced leaves and continue cooking for another 2 minutes, salting and peppering only at the end. If the sauce seems too dry, add a few tablespoons of water or broth. Adjust salt and pepper.
In the glass of an immersion blender, put the chickpeas set aside, season them with a drizzle of oil, four tablespoons of pasta cooking water, a pinch of salt, and a dash of curry, and blend them until you get a smooth cream. This cream will make the sauce more enveloping without needing to resort to cream, yogurt, or cheeses.
Pour this cream into the pak choi pan and mix everything, adding a few more tablespoons of cooking water if necessary.
In the meantime, cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water; drain it al dente (keeping some of the cooking water that could always be useful) and transfer it directly into the sauce pan. Stir carefully to perfectly combine the ingredients. Finally, add the crunchy chickpeas.
Divide the pasta with pak choi into individual plates, dress it with a drizzle of raw oil, and serve immediately, hot. Enjoy! Paola.
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