Diana Henry posted about this recipe the other day and by some happenstance I had ALL the ingredients in the house, except for the fundamental pasta. Luckily I have a pasta machine, eggs and flour to make the requisite tagliatelle to make this Turkish Pasta. Apparently it is based on some sort of time consuming lamb stuffed pasta. Well this ‘Simple’ variant, is anything but time consuming, if you don’t decide to make tagliatelle for the first time ever that is.
The main ingredients are caramelised onions, dill, yoghurt, a spiced butter and feta. There is something about the flavour profile that reminds me of Turkish Eggs, or Cilbir. If you don’t decide to make your own pasta, the most time consuming part of dish is caramelising the onions, with a stick of cinnamon and bay leaf. This really shouldn’t take any less than 35 minutes. The dill and yoghurt are added to the caramelised onions while the pasta needs to be cooked till al dente. The al dente pasta is then stirred through the yoghurty onions with a splash of the cooking water.
The recipe calls for greek yoghurt and buttermilk, but I just used the equivalent weight of a full-fat natural yoghurt. Its what I had in my fridge, but equally, I think the texture
Meanwhile, some cayenne pepper is gently fried in some butter. The yoghurty, oniony pasta is then separated into bowls and topped with some crumbled feta, a bit more dill and that toasty, cayenne butter.
There is something slightly magical about a dish that is so robust, hearty and rich but can also be surprisingly light and fresh.
Simple is a contentious word, but this Turkish Pasta is both fairly simple to make and rewardingly rich. My favourite mix of low input to max output. A definite recommend. Recipe is available on foodism.com, or in Diana Henry’s Simple.
