One-pot pasta with fennel and peas in orange-basil cheese sauce with smoked nuts

Ingredients for 2 servings:

• 160 g pasta, e.g. Rigate
• 200 g fennel
• 150 g peas, frozen, thawed
• 1 m.-large onion(s), red
• 3 garlic cloves
• 500 ml vegetable stock
• 200 ml orange juice
• 75 g sour cream
• 100 g mozzarella, firmer
• 1 tsp fennel seeds, ground
• ½ tsp mint, dried
• some basil leaves
• 2 tsp oil for frying
• e.g. salt and pepper
• 30 g pecans
• ½ tsp powdered sugar
• ¼ tsp smoked salt

Instructions

Working time approx. 10 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 40 minutes

Wash the fennel bulb and remove the root end. Separate the individual segments. Thinly slice the green stem ends and cut the remaining white segments crosswise into thin strips, halving them lengthwise if necessary. Peel the onions and cut them lengthwise into wedges. Peel and press or finely chop the garlic. Roll up the basil leaves and cut them into thin strips. Roughly break the pecans, place them in a small bowl, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and mix. Toast the nut pieces in a pan over medium heat for a few minutes until the powdered sugar has melted and is lightly caramelized. Return the nuts to the bowl, immediately sprinkle with smoked salt, and mix. Heat the oil in the pan and sauté the onions over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Add the fennel, garlic, and a pinch of salt, and continue sautéing for about 4 minutes. Deglaze with the vegetable stock and stir in the sour cream. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes over medium heat. Add the pasta to the pan, stir, and cook with the lid on for another 8 minutes. Add the thawed peas and cook with the lid on for another 4 minutes. Remove the lid, pour in the orange juice, and add the ground fennel seeds and dried mint. Immediately sprinkle in the grated cheese, stirring constantly, until melted. Bring everything to a boil and simmer briefly until the sauce becomes creamy. Finally, add the basil and season generously with black pepper and salt, if desired. Sprinkle the smoked nuts over the pasta before serving. Notes: I used pasta with a cooking time of 11 minutes. Pasta always takes a little longer to cook in a one-pot cooker, so the cooking time stated above is also longer overall. If using pasta with a shorter cooking time, slightly increase the cooking time of the fennel in the broth and reduce the cooking time with the pasta accordingly before adding the peas. Otherwise, the faster-cooking pasta would become too soft overall. However, the fennel and peas should still be cooked through at the end, since the cooking times for the vegetables remain the same. The sauce shouldn’t be boiling again when adding the cheese, as this could cause it to clump. Therefore, the orange juice cools the sauce beforehand.