Rigatoni with Cauliflower and Gorgonzola
Ingredients
2 servings
- Rigatoni 200 g
- Water for cooking the pasta 2 l
- Salt for cooking the pasta 10 g (5 g per 1 l of water)
- Cauliflower 0.5 head
- Cream (20%) 150 ml
- Gorgonzola 100 g
- Butter 1 tbsp
- Parmesan (grated) 1 tbsp (7 g)
- Salt, black pepper to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Cauliflower
If you like a rich, slightly sharp pasta sauce, you will love rigatoni with cauliflower, cream and gorgonzola. The large rigatoni tubes fill up nicely even with a thin sauce and hold it well inside, so you don’t even need to thicken the sauce further. The cauliflower florets in the dish are fairly large, comparable to the pasta tubes.
Break the cauliflower into florets: wash it and cut off the florets, leaving a short stem. For the florets to be al dente in the finished dish, you can skip blanching the cauliflower, and it will stay slightly crunchy.
Fry the florets and simmer them under a lid. Heat 1 tbsp of butter in a pan. When it starts to bubble, reduce the heat to medium and add the cauliflower florets to the butter. Stirring, fry them for 3-4 mins until lightly browned.
Then cover the pan with a lid and simmer the cauliflower over low heat for 4-5 mins. Transfer the fried cauliflower to a plate.
Sauce
You can add various suitable ingredients to the dish. As extras you can use pitted raisins soaked beforehand or pieces of dried apricot, which add a note of sweetness and taste really good. Pine nuts are a nice addition too.
Make the creamy gorgonzola sauce. Grate fresh gorgonzola or cut it into small pieces. Pour the cream into the same pan (use one that isn’t too fatty, 20% is enough) and bring to a boil. Add the cheese to the boiling cream. Stirring often, melt the cheese completely into the cream: you should get a smooth mixture that isn’t too thick.
Let the sauce simmer over the lowest heat. Add just a little salt (gorgonzola is salty itself) and season with freshly ground black pepper.
Add all the fried cauliflower to the sauce and stir. Cover the pan with a lid and keep it on the lowest heat for a few minutes. Stir the sauce and cauliflower from time to time, not letting it burn. If the sauce is too thick, you can add a little more cream, or milk with a small piece of butter. In the end, the sauce should be like thick kefir with large cauliflower florets.
Pasta
While the sauce is cooking, boil the rigatoni. It takes longer than the sauce, so put the water on the heat as soon as you start the sauce. In a pot, bring 2 l of water with 10 g of salt to a boil over high heat (5 g per 1 l, since the sauce is salty anyway). To keep it from overcooking, this pasta usually takes 11-13 mins. Drain the pasta in a colander.
Mix the rigatoni with the creamy cauliflower sauce and toss well. If you think it needs it, you can add a bit more pepper, which tastes good.
Serving
Divide the pasta among plates and sprinkle with Parmesan grated on a fine grater, so that you get a noticeable “cap”. Serve the pasta while it is hot, as the creamy sauce thickens considerably as it cools, and it isn’t worth reheating.
The rigatoni tubes are filled with sauce and are easy to eat one by one. There is no need to add herbs or other ingredients for serving.
Calories and macros
795 kcal
Serving ≈ 390 g
- Protein30 g16% of kcal
- Fat37 g43% of kcal
- Carbs80 g41% of kcal
100 g206 kcalProtein 7.8 gFat 9.6 gCarbs 20.8 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.