Linguine with Spiced Butter

I love pasta. I could eat pasta with some sort of sauce every single day. Or just plain pasta with a little butter and parmesan. Or cheddar. That is what I often ate when I lived in Galway (Ireland) for 3 months. My kitchen was little and it lacked all sorts of kitchen utensils. This made it difficult to cook something decent. Often I just boiled water, made myself some pasta, added a tablespoon of (salted) butter and grated some cheddar to put on top. I lost a few pounds during that time but probably also a few taste buds.
Since then I've evolved, and never went back to eating pasta with butter. But when I found the recipe for pappardelle with spiced butter on 101cookbooks I new I had to try it.

I made the spiced butter a bit differently. I only melted the butter, added the spices and then let it cool down and become solid. After that you can use the spiced butter for anything you want, I plan to make mashed potatoes with the spiced butter.



Linguine with Spiced Butter

For the spiced butter:
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
125g butter
about 2 tablespoons olive oil

Melt the butter with the olive oil on medium heat and add the spices in the meantime. Let it melt and stir well. Keep as much butter in the pan as you will need for the linguine (about 1-2 tablespoons for 2 servings) and pour the rest into a small glass jar. Put it in the fridge and give it a good shake every five minutes or so until solid.

For the Liguine with Spiced Butter you need:
Linguine (about 200g dry pasta for 2)
1-2 tablespoons spiced butter
50g frozen peas
a few leaves mint, chopped
saffron (a few threads or one of these little sachets of about 0.1g powdered)
2 tablespoons roasted pumpkin seeds, chrushed or chopped

Bring salt water to a boil and prepare pasta according to the instructions on the package.
If you made the butter fresh, just add the peas and the chopped mint to the pan, let it heat up and add the saffron (If you use threads, grind in a mortar with a bit of salt). Stir in well, then add the cooked linguine. Mix well and add more spiced butter if neccessary. Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds on top (I usually just crush them between my fingers, but if you want more even size of the pieces you can chop them with a knife.)