Good With: Lettuce based salads, Garlic Bread, Pepper Bread
Prep Time: < 5 minutes
Total Time: 15 minutes
Cost: $1.25 per serving
Original Pirate Material

If it wasn’t apparent before, it definitely is now: we’re really into goat cheese-based pan sauces. It’s such a rich, beautiful taste… Adding in the white wine (for quick and delicious de-glazing*) doesn’t take away from the flavor of the cheese at all but, instead, adds a delicate depth to the overall dish. Fortunately, we had some frozen broccoli forming ice fossils in the back of our freezer, so we can now dub this dish “healthy”.

* De-glazing is the process that occurs after you’ve browned something in a pan (it gets those burnt bits on the bottom) and add liquid, which is used to loosen the burnt flavor bits (plus some scraping with a wooden spoon) and adds huge flavor to the sauce.

Ingredients

Makes: 2 servings

8 oz. dried rigatoni pasta (or whatever you have on hand)
1 c. frozen broccoli
3 tbsp. butter, divided
1/4 c. white wine
2 oz. goat cheese (we used an herbed goat cheese)

Preparation Instructions

1. Boil a pot of water. Add pasta and about a teaspoon of kosher salt.

2. Melt 2 tbsp. butter in a saucepan or wide skillet over medium heat. Add frozen broccoli and cook until slightly tender (but no longer frozen). Add goat cheese and mix lightly. Don’t let the cheese sit and burn, but if there are little brown bits starting to form on the bottom of the pan, you’re doing okay.

3. Add the remaining butter and the white wine. Once you add the wine, use a wooden spoon to scrape the burned bits off the bottom of the pan, and simmer until thickened. (Optional: You can add parmasean cheese here, if you like.)

4. Add cooked pasta to the broccoli mixture and combine together, but be careful not to break the noodles. Add salt, pepper, and parmasean cheese (if you like), and serve hot.

Yaaaaaaaaaargh!: As we mentioned above, we used an herbed goat cheese but, as long as the cheese is slightly soft, you can use just about any type of chèvre-style goat cheese. If you have leftover steamed broccoli, definitely substitute it – just cook it in the melted butter until it’s warm, then add the goat cheese. Feel free to experiment with different type of white wine, also. We stood at our Whole Foods yaking it up with the wine guy for about 25 minutes before purchasing that Blanco wine. Bothering your local wine nerd is highly recommended.

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