Spaghetti recipe #3 - Lemon Broccoli

For the last recipe to use up my batch of CFC bargainous 'ghetti I adapted and added to a recipe from the Good Housekeeping book 'Eat Well, Stay Well' making use of the ingredients I had in the house. [Although this book has a good review on Amazon I personally don't rate it that much, it's ok but I hardly ever go to it for anything.)

Spaghetti & Broccoli in a lemon nut butter sauce
1oz hazlenuts -toasted
1.5-2oz butter
3 cloves garlic
1 lemon
0.5 tbsp dried basil
10oz / 300g ish fresh spaghetti
Broccoli - approx 1 small-med head
2tbsp sgl cream (I used the last of the dbl cream I had in the fridge and a little milk to make about 2 tbsp)
S & P

Chop the hazlenuts and toast gently under the grill, I found it easiest to do this in a small foil pie dish or you could make a dish shape from foil. Keep an eye on them and remove once done.
Zest and juice the lemon, keeping the 2 seperate. I added some of the pulpy flesh to the juice as well.
Melt butter until golden brown in a big enough pan to take the broccoli and pasta as well. Meanwhile peel and thinly slice the garlic.
Once butter's golden brown (keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't burn) add garlic and nuts and cook, stirring, for 30ish secs. Add lemon zest and dried basil, stir and remove from the heat.

Chop broccoli into bite size florets, cook and drain. Cook and drain the spaghetti. Stir both into the butter mix over a low heat for 2-3 mins.

Add lemon juice and cream and stir in. Taste and season as required with salt and freshly ground black pepper.


This was pretty good; if making again I'd probably use slightly less lemon and perhaps a little more cream. The lemon did dominate more than I expected. However lemon will 'cook out' so a little more heating can help neutralise this.

Adding this amount of broccoli made this into a 3 serving meal, one to eat and 2 for the freezer.

I make it that I got 9 servings from a 500g bag of fresh pasta once I'd added the seafood / spinach / broccoli. Not bad for the 79p it cost plus the 50ish p for the double cream. Everything else came from the store cupboard / freezer. Even more satisfyingly I now have 5 portions of ready made scrummy pasta goodness secreted in the freezer for the month ahead.