Pasta With Spring Onions, Asparagus & Guanciale
If you’re out and encounter spring onions, I’d consider springing for them! I told you before, when it comes to dad jokes I just can’t help it.
Spring onions are basically early harvest onions that get super sweet when cooked. You can use them for many things and here, we’re using them as the base for a pasta sauce.
For this pasta, I wanted to make something creamy, bright and delicious that really spoke to the produce I was running into at the farmer’s market at the time. I also wanted to use up some lovely Guanciale that I had been gifted from la Salumina in upstate NY!
We start with rendering out lardons of the Guanciale and then cooking down the whites of our onions until sweet and tender. Then we add the onion greens for a few minutes and stir in some heavy cream before blending with olive oil and dill. You can kind of play around with the herbs for this one but I grew up in a dill heavy household and really enjoy its fresh flavor.
We strain the sauce, lightly saute some asparagus and combine everything together with some pasta water to create a luscious pasta dish with bright, sweet and smoky flavors!
Ingredients:
½ lb dried rigatoni pasta
Guanciale, cut into lardons
.5 pound spring onions, trimmed, white and green parts divided & thinly sliced
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup parmesan, micrograted
½ cup dill, roughly chopped
1 tsp lemon zest
Juice from 1 lemon
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Steps:
In a large sauté pan cook Guanciale lardons over medium-low heat, moving around the pan occasionally so they render evenly (about 8 to 10 minutes).
Keeping the cooking fat in the pan, transfer the lardons to a small bowl and set aside.
Increase heat to medium-high and add white and light green spring onion parts. Season with salt and cook, stirring frequently, until well cooked (about 10 minutes). Add remaining onion parts and cook for another 5 minutes.
Stir in the cream, and simmer for several minutes until thick.
Transfer mixture to a blender and blend on high speed until smooth (about 1 minute). Season with salt. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer back into the saute pan. Warm the sauce over low heat, occasionally scraping down the sides of the pan to prevent skin from forming.
In a separate pot, cook pasta until al dente
Transfer pasta to the pan along with about a half cup of pasta water, lardons and peas. Increase heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring rapidly until sauce has thickened slightly and pasta is well-coated. Add more pasta water if the sauce gets too tight.
Remove from the heat and add in parmesan, lemon zest and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Plate and garnish with dill springs.