Spicy Curry Spaghetti with Chickpeas

My coworker and I were talking and one of them said they added curry powder to their sauce, so with that thought in my head I created this recipe…Italy meet India! Italians make pasta e ceci, which is just pasta in a red sauce with chickpeas. Chickpeas are also heavily used in Indian cooking and they are a good source of protein. That’s a win win situation to me! It’s also something that meat eaters and even vegans can enjoy.

Ingredients:

1lb of spaghetti

2 tbs of olive oil

3 cloves of garlic

1 hot pepper I used a Hungarian wax from my garden

1 can of whole peeled tomatoes diced

I would have diced a real onion but I didn’t have one but I had some dehydrated onion from whole foods so I used that.

1 can of drained rinsed chickpeas

Fresh Basil

Fresh Oregano

Dried Italian seasoning

About 2 tsp of curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook your Spaghetti according to packaged directions. Heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add your garlic and your hot pepper. One they are soft add your tomatoes, dehydrated onion, basil, oregano, Italian seasoning, curry powder, chickpeas, and salt and pepper. Cook for 20 minutes until the tomatoes breakdown and your sauce comes together.

 

 (side note: the beautiful purple basil is from my garden)

Spaghetti al Formaggio Parmigiano in Aruba

I’ve been to Aruba several times, but this is the one dish that has stayed in my mind. So I just had to blog about this dish.

The first time I had this was a few years ago when we went to Aruba with my then boyfriend, now husbands, parents. It was the first time they were in Aruba and they have this dish every year when they go back.  Domenick and I loved it so much that we had it twice while we were there this time, but prepared at two different places, Gianni’s and Sole Mare. Personally I preferred Gianni’s but I also was sick at the time we ate at Sole Mare.

The pasta is served for 2 or more people and trust me if one person gets it the other person would have wished they got it anyway! First they bring out parmesan wheel on a cart. Then a server brings a flaming ladle of whiskey and a pan full of pasta in a sauce with fresh tomatoes. The ladle of flaming whiskey is dumped into the parmesan wheel and begins to melt the cheese and turn it into a creamy gooey lovely sauce. Once the server has scraped all of the cheese they add the pasta and toss it with the flamed whiskey cheese sauce and viola you have the most amazing pasta dish ever created! The dish that is most similar that most of you would be familiar with is pasta with vodka sauce, but for me, it’s much better! You cannot taste the whiskey, but the way that flamed whiskey melts the cheese is just amazing. I literally could just eat that with a spoon, yumm!

The thing about this dish is that they claim it is an authentic Italian dish. However, I’ve never seen an Italian cook with whiskey and I researched it a bit but couldn’t find anything. So I guess I’ll just take their word for it. All I know is that it is more of a traditional way of making a “cream sauce” in Italy. Now we add actual cream to our vodka and alfredo sauces but the traditional way was to add a TON of parmesan and toss it with some hot pasta and hot pasta water pasta water or vodka sauce.

If you find yourself in Aruba this is the number one dish I recommend!

I am planning on creating my own version of this dish so stay tuned to see how it turns out.

The Whiskey added to the parm wheel

The waitress scraping the cheese after the whiskey melted it

The spaghetti being mixed with the cheese

We were too hungry to take a picture after it was plated so this is about halfway through