Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Baked Lemon Pasta

This pasta is delicious but I would call it a side dish, rather than an entree. You can only eat so much of it before the lemon and Parmesan flavor gets overpowering. The boys were cute; they were hesitant to try the pasta and when they tried it they both gave a "Hmph"... the kind of Hmph that implies it's better than they expected. After that they just gobbled noodles faster than they could talk. This pasta would be fantastic served with seafood, maybe next time I'll serve it with my lemon pepper fish!!
**Overnight Update- I thought about this pasta all night long and I finally realized what taste it resembles, shrimp scampi... like noodles that have had scampi sauce poured all over them! We didn't have any leftovers (the neighbor boys finished it off) but I am craving some more today! Can we have the same dinner two days in a row?

Ingredients
1 pound thin spaghetti
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 cups sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
Grated Parmesan cheese
Flat leaf parsley, chopped

Directions
Cook spaghetti until al dente. In a skillet, melt butter with olive oil over LOW HEAT. When butter is melted, add minced garlic. Squeeze lemon juice into the pan. Turn off heat. Stop to inhale the magic you've just created! The butter, garlic, and lemon... Mmmm it is quite possibly the best smell in the world! Add the sour cream and stir mixture together. Add lemon zest and salt. Taste, then add more salt if necessary. Pour mixture over drained spaghetti and stir together, then pour spaghetti into an oven safe dish. Bake, covered, for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. Then remove foil and bake for an additional 7 to 10 minutes. (Don’t bake too long or the pasta will dry out.)

Let me pause for a second and talk about cheese. We like cheese, so I thought I would shred the entire 7-ounce triangle of Parmesan cheese. It would be the perfect amount for our pasta, right? Wrong! It was WAY too much cheese! In the future I will only shred 3-ounces of cheese! Look at the mountain of cheese I ended up with!! When you remove it from the oven, top generously with Parmesan cheese, then chopped parsley.

4 comments:

Donna-FFW said...

This sounds delicious. I think it is an aewesome idea to use as a side dish! You are too cute, that mound of cheese is ginormous:)

Coleens Recipes said...

What a great idea!! I can see it as a side dish for a LOT of things.

Pam said...

What a fantastic pasta dish. I never thought to use sour cream as the sauce. Looks great.

♥peachkins♥ said...

simple yet very flavorful pasta dish.can't wait to try it