Cardamon Roasted Tomato Pasta

So I'm a pastaholic. I love almost any kind of pasta except for baked dishes and cream-based sauces, but oils, butters, tomato-based... All of the rest of it is fair game. My boyfriend knows this, and he also is desperately frantic to get me to gain weight. It seems to have become his personal mission. This leads us to today's recipe.

Cardamon Roasted Tomato Pasta

I save almost every recipe my boyfriend gives me if it involves pasta, and this was one of TWO roasted tomato recipes he linked me, because I don't know. I substituted the cardamon pods with ground cardamon, the lemon zest with lemon juice, and the chicken stock with vegetable broth.



I took this picture in one try.

Anyway, so beineg a pasta lover, I'm very biased. I wolfed this down pretty contently. I will note, however, that I found the sauce to be quite bland. I think my problem is lemon zest substitutions; one teaspoon of lemon juice apparently calls for two TABLESPOONS of lemon juice. Those lemon zest strips they used are probably easily two teaspoons a piece, which means I should have added, uh, four tablespoons of lemon juice or eight for the original recipe amount. That's quite a bit of lemon juice.

So yeah, I imagine with the right amount of lemon it's quite zesty (hur), but I also found the cardamon to be surprisingly underwhelming. Maybe try more for a stronger flavour.

The tomatoes were great roasted though (I had to roast them for longer than instructed, for what it is worth), nice and juicy.

Also, you know, pasta. I will note that since this is a pretty light sauce, unless you LOVE the taste of gluten-free pasta, this may not work with them. I bet it'd match with buckwheat though.

Overall? 8/10 if the modifications I recommended end up working. I added it to my "Delicious" Bookmarks so hey. SOMETHING went right (the pasta).

Bonus Rating! I had some Rising Moon Organic Feta and Hazelnut Ravioli. I expected amazing because holy shit feta, hazelnuts, and squash? In ravioli?

They were the most underwhelming, unimpressive ravioli I've ever had. No joke. Freakin' Target brand cheese ravioli are tastier. I come from a place with lots of Italians, and I've had top of the line ravioli before. Those were not even CLOSE.

I do not recommend that ravioli, and quite possibly that whole brand. Bleh.