The creamy pasta with hazelnuts and bell peppers is a flavorful, easy, and quick to prepare first course. A mix of summer and autumn flavors come together in this dish, which is prepared with few ingredients and is delicious! The pasta (in our case linguine but other shapes are also fine) is flavored with a sauce made of bell peppers sautéed in a pan with garlic and rosemary and then made creamy and fragrant thanks to a special pesto prepared with hazelnuts. This results in a rich and tasty pasta, ready in 20 minutes, so good you’ll lick your lips!
The preparation is very simple: we sauté the diced bell peppers in a pan with oil, garlic, and rosemary. Meanwhile, we prepare a quick hazelnut pesto by chopping them with garlic and adding Parmesan, milk, olive oil, basil, and salt. We drain the al dente pasta directly into the bell pepper pan and toss it with the hazelnut cream and some pasta cooking water to make it more enveloping and creamy.
A perfect first course to prepare for lunch or dinner when you have little time but don’t want to miss out on a tasty pasta. It is also very versatile because we can prepare the hazelnut pesto in advance and store it in the fridge, so we just need to drain the pasta and season it on the spot with the ready-made pesto. Try the creamy pasta with hazelnuts and bell peppers and let us know what you think!
Also discover:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Cheap
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4 People
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Summer, Autumn
Ingredients to Prepare the Creamy and Tasty Pasta with Hazelnuts and Bell Peppers
- 12 oz linguine
- 1 1/4 cups hazelnuts
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 cup grated Parmesan
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 leaves basil
- 1 sprig rosemary
- salt
Tools to Prepare the Pasta with Hazelnuts and Bell Peppers
- 1 Skillet
- 1 Blender
- 1 Pot
Steps to Prepare the Pasta with Hazelnuts and Bell Peppers
Clean the bell pepper by removing the seeds and internal filaments and dice it.
Place it in a skillet with oil and rosemary and cook for about ten minutes, salting at the end of cooking.
Crush the hazelnuts with the garlic clove or chop them in the blender.
Add the Parmesan, milk, basil, and oil and blend just enough to make the sauce creamy.
In the meantime, bring water with coarse salt to a boil, pour in the pasta, and cook it, draining al dente and saving a few ladles of pasta cooking water. Pour the pasta into the skillet with the bell pepper and add the hazelnut sauce with a little pasta cooking water to combine.
Mix well, plate, and serve.
Simo and Cicci Recommend
Store the creamy pasta with hazelnuts and bell peppers in the fridge for 2-3 days.
You can prepare the hazelnut pesto in advance and store it in the fridge until it’s time to season the pasta.
You can replace the bell pepper with other vegetables like zucchini, mushrooms, pumpkin, etc.
For a vegan version, replace the milk with almond milk or other plant-based milk, and the Parmesan with nutritional yeast or another vegan substitute.
