Supper Club: Orecchiette with hazelnuts and sage

This is a great pasta dish for when you don’t have much in the cupboards, but you still want something delicious for dinner. In other words, the perfect midweek dinner. You can make this recipe with any pasta shape you like, but orecchiette are best as they help to scoop up the sauce.

Orecchiette with hazelnuts and sage
Serves 4

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp (50g) unsalted butter
• About 10 sage leaves
• 300g orecchiette
• ? cup (60g) toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
• Parmesan or Pecorino, freshly grated
• Fleur de sel
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Method

1. Heat the butter with the sage leaves in a saucepan over low heat, until the butter melts. Let infuse over very low heat for 15–20 minutes.
2. Cook the orecchiette in a large pan of boiling salted water for about 10 minutes, or for 1 or 2 minutes less than the time indicated on the package.
3. Drain the pasta and toss it with the melted butter and sage leaves to coat.
4. Transfer the pasta to a serving bowl. Sprinkle over the hazelnuts and grate the cheese over the top according to personal taste. Season with pepper and serve immediately.

Note: You can also swap out the hazelnuts for other nuts of your choice: pecans, cashews, almonds, or a mix of different nuts work well. 

Extracted from My Art of Entertaining: Recipes and Tips from Miss Maggie’s Kitchen by Héloïse Brion (Flammarion, 2022).

Photography by Christophe Roué 2022.