Flower Sprouts with Cavatelli Pugliesi in tomato sauce

Ingredients for 2 servings:

• 160 g pasta (Cavatelli Pugliesi or Strozzapreti)
• 150 g cabbage florets (flower sprouts)
• 4 tomatoes, fresh and ripe
• 1 m.-sized onion(s), white or yellow
• 1 clove(s) garlic
• 1 small chili pepper(s)
• 1 tbsp olive oil, e.g. Apulian
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 50 g Pecorino

Instructions

Working time approx. 10 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 35 minutes; Total time approx. 45 minutes

Quickly cooked, delicious, vegetarian dish (it becomes vegan without cheese)

For the tomato sauce, pour boiling water over the tomatoes and peel them. Sauté the onions gently (do not brown them). When they are almost soft, add the garlic, salt, and sugar. When both are soft, add the roughly chopped tomatoes and chili pepper. Simmer for about 30 minutes until you have a creamy tomato sauce (remove the chili earlier if you like it, but do not puree it!). Puree with a hand blender. If you prefer a finer sauce, pass it through a sieve (to remove the tomato seeds and any remaining fibers); I don’t. I don’t add any herbs because I don’t want to overpower the cabbage-nutty flavor of the sprouts, and tomato puree is nice too. If you already have the ready-made tomato sauce in stock, this dish can be served in 12 minutes. For the pasta and sprouts, bring 2-3 liters of salted water (contains 2-3 tablespoons of salt) to a boil. Add the pasta, and after about 5 minutes, add the sprouts. When the pasta is cooked, drain. Serve on a plate with tomato sauce and pecorino, and drizzle with a drizzle of fine olive oil if desired. It’s a matter of taste whether you trim the sprouts of their small stems. There’s no need to clean them thoroughly like Brussels sprouts or kale; they combine the benefits of both. The flavor is more intense if you fry the sprouts in a pan and let them brown lightly. Then you have to dirty a pan again, though, so practically everything is in one pot. If you fry them in the pan, finely chopped bacon or ham would certainly be a good choice. Instead of pecorino, I could also imagine finely diced feta, but then I would choose pasta that would be more suited to a Greek interpretation, such as kritharaki.