20 min Dinner Saving Fusilli With Creamy Ricotta
Satisfying comfort bowl dinner that even has protein - boom! Dinner is served!
Next time you go grocery shopping, pick up a container of the best ricotta you can find. Your future self will thank you.
Think: a Saturday lunch, a weeknight dinner, or the perfect meal after a red-eye flight and before an afternoon nap.
Sometimes I consider ordering McDonalds here IN ITALY. In weak, tired moments after full-time working and momming, I consider it. This is the pasta that rescues me in those moments and brings me sitting down to fresh, warm steaming yum in 20 minutes or less. And it will do the same for you. Will it take LESS time and effort to just make something than to pick up fast food? If the thing is this pasta, than yes!
pst! Scroll to the very bottom to download recipe pdf!
A quick word about ricotta:
Ricotta is a gentle-flavored, creamy dairy product - actually not a cheese (surprise!) - made from cow, goat or sheep milk. It’s called cheese but is re-cooked (ri-cotta) whey remaining from other cheese production like parmiggiano reggiano. The result is this thick, creamy adaptable canvas for so many savory and sweet recipes that also works divinely on its own, as in this recipe.
I pick up a fresh goat milk ricotta at the local market in Como every Saturday. It’s packaged in a little plastic basket that was used to strain any extra liquid and looks like a drier cottage cheese. But I have also made this pasta with industrial-produced ricotta from the supermarket. It’s usually less flavorful and more liquid in texture but still ricotta! I encourage you to try with the best quality ricotta you can find, but any ricotta will work here.
If you’re in the US and your pocketbook is feeling adventurous, Katie Parla’s latest cookbook, Food of the Italian Islands lists the following US resources for ordering ricotta:
Caputo Brothers Creamery caputobrotherscreamery.com
Di Bruno Brothers dibruno.com
Fusilli with creamy ricotta
Pasta e ricotta
FOR 4 PEOPLE
3 Tbsp of salt
4 liters water
400 g fusilli pasta
300 g ricotta
6-12 Tbsp cooking water reserved, taken partway through cooking - important! this is your salt!
Freshly ground pepper, to taste (optional)
The pasta
Put the water and salt in a large pot on the stove on high heat until it boils.
Once boiling, add the pasta. Stir, and stir again every once in a while to prevent sticking. I recommend setting a timer to the time on the package so you don’t overcook and end up with pasta mush.
The sauce
Put the ricotta in a big bowl. After the pasta has been cooking for at least half its time and is releasing its starches, gradually spoon out the pasta water and add it to the ricotta, mashing together with a fork until it seems a bit wetter and softer than cottage cheese. You may need less than 3 Tablespoons of cooking water for this. The salt in the cooking water will flavor the ricotta and the starches will thicken and bind the sauce.
Freshly grind pepper to taste and mix again. For kids, you can leave out the pepper if they are not fans. My 12-year old son happily eats this pasta with no pepper at all!
Serving tips:
Bring the big bowl to the table and pass around to serve family style from the big bowl.
Serve immediately. Because the ricotta was only heated by the pasta water and pasta itself, it is not a boiling hot dish.
Notes:
Salt: It’s important not to skimp. This salt is flavoring both your pasta and also your sauce in the form of pasta water.
Pasta: You can also make this with other short, grooved pasta that will grab and hold the thick ricotta sauce. Suggestions: penne, cavatappi, farfalle, rigatoni. Long, thin pasta like spaghetti will not work here because it won’t hold to the pasta.
Ricotta also pairs beautifully with gluten-free pasta like buckwheat fusilli, which will lend a light nutty taste to the dish.
Add a lovely but absolutely unnecessary contorno:
20-minute roast asparagus: As its spring, throw the oven to 180C / 350 F, break off the tough ends of a bunch of asparagus, and roast coated with extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt for 20 min. Should be ready just as you finish the pasta to eat as a contorno, the vegetable course that Italians eat later in the meal.
Buon appetito!
x Lolly
If you got this far, please drop me a ciao! in the comments and let me know where you’re from, what your cooking dreams are, and what you like to cook and eat!
A little more about what you can expect here.
Every Sunday: an easy, 30-minute or less Italian pasta recipe with few seasonal ingredients, suitable for weeknight cookery.
Additional rotating sections may include:
Snarkleletta: the underbelly of Italy: it’s not all Spritz and white linen
Seasonality: what’s in season, new, on the way out, anticipated arrivals in my local Como market
Como meraviglioso: magical moments (dead serious here) in Italian culture, daily life
Things-that-are-not-wheat: Though I am a well-known pasta freak, another favorite pastime is cooking with the many non-wheat carbs in Italy’s food tradition: polenta, buckwheat, chickpea flour, chestnut flour, almond paste, einkorn, spelt, gluten-free stuff, and of course, rice.
I adore a good hack for getting delicious weeknight meals on the table in minutes. Another recipe added to the TBM list! 🍝
Mouthwatering. I love pasta, I love ricotta -- why have I never made this? Fixing that soon.