By Lizzie Moss
Serves 2
You’ll probably remember the first time you had burnt butter and sage.
The simplicity of those perfect flavours is life changing. My first time was at Zonzo, a winery in the Yarra Valley. The sauce was served with gnocchi and for a long time when I was in my late teens, this was my favourite dish. It’s unsurprising given bread and butter, or butter more specifically, continues to be my favourite thing to eat. This is one of those fantastic meals where you can just whack all the ingredients in a blender and hope for the best. If you do the roasting over the weekend, you can keep it in the fridge ready for a quick midweek dinner.
Ingredients
- 1kg pumpkin (I used butternut)
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 250ml oat cream (or cream of your choice)
- 100g butter
- 50g Parmigiano Reggiano (optional)
- A handful of sage
- A handful of walnuts
- 200g of dried pasta (I think rigatoni would be best, but I used fresh mafaldine)
Method
- Chop up your pumpkin and onion and roast in a pan with the garlic cloves, plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper for around 40 minutes at 200°C, or until the pumpkin starts to char.
- Set aside a small amount of cooked pumpkin to add at the end.
- In a blender, blitz the pumpkin, onion and garlic with some more olive oil, salt and pepper until it makes a chunky paste.
- While your pasta is cooking, start to melt your butter in a pan on a low heat.
- Add your sage and fry in the butter until crispy, then remove and set aside for later.
- When the butter is browned and starts to get frothy, it’s ready!
- Keeping the heat low, add the pumpkin puree into the butter and stir to combine.
- Add your cream to taste and if you’re using cheese, add that also.
- Once the pasta is cooked, add it to your pumpkin sauce.
- Serve with some of the pieces of cooked pumpkin, chopped walnuts and the crispy sage, which you set aside.