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Roasted Garlic Farfalle Pasta with Brocolli – Delicious and Simple Weeknight Dinner

This is one of those ‘I don’t have a lot of time or motivation to cook’ dinners that really satisfies.  It’s really simple to prepare and tastes the same way, but there are some tricks you can do to make the taste really good.  This is also one of my favorite ways to utilize broccoli stems, as opposed to just the florets (the stems are really good too! Especially peeled and roughly chopped).

The process of preparing this dish is also somewhat disconnected.  As soon as I got home from work, I put the garlic in the oven to roast, then waited around and hour before doing the rest of it.  Trust me, the garlic is worth the pain in the ass wait – and is the most important part of this dish.  Give it some time and bring it to an awesome gooey temperature with even a little crust on the outside.  If you love garlic, go with the full two heads and incorporate all of the cloves.  You can tone it down from there, but I recommend going full throttle, it’s really good and will sort of melt into the rest of the dish.

I kind of overcooked the broccoli a little bit, but hey, at least the stems held up and were good.  If you decide to blanch the broccoli before incorporating it, just don’t let it go for too long.  Here’s what to do:

• 1/2 – 3/4 lb dried farfalle pasta
• 1 large head of broccoli, florets separated and stems peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 small heads fresh garlic
• 1 medium onion
• 10-12 small crimini or other mushrooms – sliced
• 3 or 4 small sun dried tomatoes – diced small
• 1.5 Tbsp. red pepper flakes
• Juice from 1/3 – 1/2 of a lemon
• 1/2 cup shredded fresh (and good quality) Parmesano-Reggiano
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
• 2 slices of bacon (optional)

As I said before, start by roasting the garlic first! Preheat the oven to 400 F. Cut the heads off of the garlic and rip a small piece of tin foil off of the roll.  Place the garlic heads in the tin foil and drizzle a bit of olive oil on top before enclosing the heads in the foil.  Toss the garlic in the oven and let it go for an hour before removing it and make sure it’s soft and cooked through.  Carefully remove the cloves from the paper (don’t just squeeze it out) and set aside for later.

Next, heat a small pot of boiling water and add the broccoli for a minute of two, while prepping an ice bath at the same time.  Remove the broccoli and add it immediately to the ice bath.  Remove it once it’s cooled and set aside.

Next, create a simple saute in a skillet over medium heat by adding in some olive oil (optionally, you could also cook the veg in a little bacon fat too if you wanted to) and then the vegetables in this order: onions (cook for 3 minutes), mushrooms (cook for another 5-7 minutes), next add the broccoli and garlic and stir to combine.  Add in the red pepper and sun dried tomatoes last and lower the heat a bit before finally adding in the lemon juice.

In the same water as your cooked the broccoli, bring it back to a boil and add a decent amount of salt and the pasta.  Cook the farfalle until al dente (this type of pasta takes a little longer to cook than most!).  Then drain the pasta and add it to the vegetables – you shouldn’t need any pasta water here.  Finally, add in a little more olive oil, the Parmesan cheese and serve (top with a little more cheese as you want).  Enjoy!

Tags: broccoli, Pasta/Noodles, roasted garlic