My Pasta Rabe

This pasta is Italian-American home cooking at its simplest: broccoli rabe (rapini) steamed until just tender, tossed with fresh linguine, a garlic-mushroom-onion sauté, and a generous handful of grated Parmesan. Six ingredients plus olive oil and 30 minutes of your time.

Four cloves of minced garlic sauteed golden in olive oil with onion and sliced mushrooms create the flavor base. That garlic-infused oil is really the sauce here. It coats every strand of linguine and every piece of rapini with savory richness.

Steaming the broccoli rabe separately for five minutes tames its natural bitterness without killing it completely. You want that slight bitter edge. It’s what makes broccoli rabe different from regular broccoli, and it plays against the salty Parmesan and earthy mushrooms in a way that keeps every forkful interesting.

Kitchen Tips

• Don’t overcook the broccoli rabe. Five minutes of steaming is enough. Overcooked rapini turns army green and loses its pleasant bitter snap.
• Sauté the garlic until golden, not brown. Burned garlic is bitter in the wrong way and will ruin the dish.
• Use fresh linguine if you can find it. It has a softer, more tender bite that works better with the delicate vegetables than dried.
• Toss everything together in a large warm bowl so the cheese melts slightly into the olive oil and creates a light coating.

Variations

• Add a pinch of red pepper flakes to the garlic sauté for a spicy kick.
• Toss in a can of drained white cannellini beans for added protein.
• Use orecchiette instead of linguine for a pasta shape that catches the small vegetable pieces.