Christmas or Filippovsky post is one of the longest and most strict. It always starts on November 28th and ends on January 6th, on Christmas Day. In Russia, there have always been many recipes for lean dishes; housewives could not think about what to cook, but focus on the spiritual component of fasting. Now there are also many recipes for lean dishes from simple and affordable ingredients. For example, a recipe for pasta with pumpkin sauce.
The beginning of the Christmas Lent is the time when in many cuisines there are still round, fragrant pumpkins, rich in various vitamins and minerals. This vegetable is found in abundance in late autumn - early winter and in stores, so why not use it to prepare a nutritious, but simple and lean dish?
You will need 500 grams of peeled pumpkin pulp, as well as:
- 400 grams of dairy-free paste from durum wheat;
- ½ tablespoon of olive oil;
- ½ onion heads;
- 4 leaves of sage;
- 200 ml of vegetable broth;
- ½ teaspoon of red pepper;
- 1 clove of garlic;
- salt, nutmeg.
Boil 5 liters of water. Add 40 grams of salt to boiling water (10 grams for every 100 grams of pasta). Put the pasta, it is better to take a wide one, such as pappardelle, fettuccine or tagliatelle, let the water boil again and mix the pasta. Stir every 2-3 minutes, while cooking it, following the instructions on the package.
Simultaneously with the preparation of pasta, take care of the sauce. A good pasta is obtained when it absorbs the sauce, and this will only happen if you mix both of them hot. Cut pumpkin flesh into small cubes. Heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan and fry chopped garlic and chopped onions in it. Add chopped sage greens, a pinch of salt. Stir and fry until onion is clear. Add the pumpkin, a pinch of nutmeg, mix and pour in the hot broth. If you do not have the broth, replace it with water in which the pasta is boiled. As soon as the pumpkin is soft, mash it. Drain the water from the pasta and add it to the sauce, mix and serve your lean dish to the table.
Sage in the sauce can be replaced with thyme leaves or parsley. If you do not fast, you can prepare pumpkin sauce with cream rather than broth and add about ¼ cup ground parmesan to it.
