Simple tomato & rocket pasta

Welcome to the effortlessly flavourful world of Natalie Chassay.

On her platform, she not only shows you how to easily make those pretty and delicious kinda recipes that you want to whip up for dinner parties, she also shows you the simple building blocks for creating healthy and nurturing meals for yourself.

Here are the ingredients you'll need:

Serves 4

• Half a packet of long strand pasta
• 500g cherry tomatoes, halved
• A few large handfuls fresh rocket
• 1 lemon
• 1 hot red chilli and chilli flakes
• Parmesan cheese for grating
• Citizens of Soil extra virgin olive oil - a lot!
• Sea salt flakes
• Pepper
• Butter (optional)

Here's the method:

• Get your water on the boil in a large pot for the pasta and heavily salt it In a frying pan, heat a very generous, large few glugs of olive oil on medium/high heat.
• Once hot, add your tomatoes and let them sit and fry in the oil until blistered and exploding, say 5 minutes or so. They should really be sizzling at this point and there should be enough olive oil in your frying pan to protect them from burning/sticking to the pan. The combination of olive oil, the tomato juices (and the pasta water when its added) is what really makes the sauce so don’t be shy to add more olive oil if needed.
• Throw in your chopped chilli and/or chilli flakes. I like this to be super spicy but use however much you can tolerate.
• Add the juice of 1 lemon.
• Season well with salt and pepper.
• Continue to simmer until the tomatoes start to emulsify with the olive oil, say 5 to 10 mins or so, adjusting the heat as need be.
• For the pasta, boil for 2 mins less than what the packet says and whilst it's cooking, bring the tomatoes down to a lower heat and add a knob of butter.
• When pasta is about 1 min away from ready, start to ladle some of the starchy pasta water into the frying pan of tomatoes, bringing the heat back up slightly.
• Start with 1 to 2 ladles and see if you need more. This is when the sauce really starts to form.
• Then tong the noodles straight from the pot to the pan and mix everything together really well with a super generous grating of parmesan.
• Add more pasta water if it looks at all Toss the rocket throughout the pasta.
• Plate with more parmesan, black pepper and a generous slick of Citizens of Soil olive oil.

Now, off you go to make this and be SUPER inspired for more like it. Head on over to NatalieChassay.com and see what all she's got cookin' up. Also, she does a free weekly class that's a right treat.

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