One of my favourite thing to eat at this time of the year is beetroot. It’s such a versatile vegetable and, when roasted, the flavour and texture is amazing. Subtle and sweet, roasted beetroot works best with light flavours that compliment it. This roasted beetroot & ricotta tagliatelle recipe combines beetroot with pine nuts, thyme & lemon to create a fresh colourful dish that looks & tastes like summer.
Preparation Time: 10 minutes / Cooking Time: 50 minutes / Serves 4-6
Ingredients
- 500g tagliatelle
- 1 large (500g) beetroot
- 250g ricotta
- 25g pine nuts
- leaves from 10 fresh sprigs of thyme
- zest of 1 lemon and 30ml lemon juice
- 30ml extra virgin olive oil
- salt & pepper to taste
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200oC fan forced.
- Remove the skin of the beetroot and cut it into 2cm by 2cm squares.
- Place the beetroot evenly across a baking tray lined with baking/parchment paper and cover with aluminium foil. Bake for 50 minutes.
- In a dry fry-pan, toast the pine nuts for 3 to 4 minutes until they become golden brown. Remove from the heat and set aside.
- In a large bowl mix together the ricotta, lemon juice, zest, olive oil, thyme leaves and pine nuts.
- Once the beetroot has cooked add it to the ricotta mixture.
- Boil a large saucepan of water. Add the pasta and cook as per the instructions.
- Once the pasta has cooked, drain it and retain 50ml of the liquid that it cooked in.
- Mix together the ricotta mix, the pasta and the 50ml of liquid.
- Add salt & pepper to taste and serve.
Notes
You can use any kind of pasta that you have on hand, however because it’s not a particularly saucy dish, pasta like tagliatelle or linguine works best.
The beetroot must be fresh – tinned beetroot won’t make the grade here as the texture and flavour is quite different.