This is part of a series where Laura overcomes her fear of the kitchen and of chopping off her fingers to bring you some presumably carb and cheese loaded recipes.

I won’t stand for anyone talking ill of pasta, because nothing brings me more comfort or joy than an endless, sticky bowl of the stuff. The word ‘sticky’ might not be a word that most would use to describe something they adore, but for me, my pasta dishes are served rarely without cheese cementing those moreish shapes together, and this recipe I’m about to present is no exception.

Introducing my first dabble with cooking for the camera and my Yellow Lemon Pepper Pasta recipe, otherwise sweetly known as Toxic Waste Trofie due to it’s neon glow.

The idea for this recipe centred around a bag of dried lemon-infused trofie pasta I had bought during a recent trip to Manarola, one of the five small towns that make up Cinque Terre along the coast in Northern Italy. Trofie is a short, thin, twisted pasta which I think individually look like tiny baguettes. This kind of pasta is proudly from the North of Italy and is typically served there with pesto…but I wanted to pay respect to the colour and lemon flavour of this particular packet with a vibrant, summery sauce.

Now, I understand that you can’t all hop on a plain and pop to Italy to pick up trofie, but I reckon any other kind of pasta of your choosing will do just fine. I can particularly imagine this cheesy, refreshing sauce would go brilliantly with macaroni.

Ingredients:

(Serves 2-3, dependant upon the size of your portions…)

1 tin of anchovies
Salt & pepper
Dried thyme
Olive oil
Roughly 300g of dried pasta
2 yellow peppers
Half a lemon
5 loaded tablespoonfuls of soured cream
Plenty of parmesan cheese

The How To:

1. Put your pasta on to simmer for two minutes short of the cooking time stated on the packet – trofie takes around 18 minutes to cook, so I cooked it for 16.

2. While your waiting, roughly chop and de-seed the peppers and half the lemon.

3. In a blender, throw in the peppers, anchovies, a sprinkling of salt, pepper and thyme, a glug of olive oil, the juice from half the lemon (more if your pasta happens not to be lemon-infused), the soured cream and a cup of the pasta water and blitz until smooth.

4. Once the pasta is cooked (two minutes short remember), drain and add the sauce to the pasta and saucepan with the parmesan cheese, then heat for a further two minutes until the cheese has melted.

5. Serve up. Enjoy.