Another Secret

I keep forgetting to share this culinary epiphany I had recently. When you cook pasta and are using a fresh herb (as hopefully you are), particularly one of the more “robust ones” (sage or rosemary, say), here follows a clever trick.

Save a little of the herb – some of which has presumably gone into the sauce at an earlier stage – for the draining of the pasta. Put this saved herb into the colander when you get it (the colander) ready in the sink. Then, when you pour the pasta into the colander, the hot water blanches the herb and it goes back into the pot with the pasta for that final glug of oil and the sauce. The result: the herb is fresh but not as offensive as some of the more robust ones can be.

Ha. Bet Jamie never thought of that one.

Go on. You know you want to try it.