Rotini Pasta with walnuts, olives and garlic butter

This is a great meatless Monday meal we tried this week. We adapted it from the NY Times Food recipe by Ali Slagel. The beauty is in the subtlety of the flavors. We added the garlic butter in addition to the olive oil at the beginning. We cut the amount of olive oil down to 1/4 cup and added about 2 Tbs of the garlic butter in exchange. We also added freshly grated parmesan at the end.

Ingredients:

Kosher salt and black pepper

1 pound short pasta like cavatelli, orrecchiette, fusilli or elbows

1/4 cup olive oil

2 Tbs Fireworks Chefs Butters Garlic

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 1/4 Cup Castelvetrano olives (or a mix of green olives) pitted and torn

1 small garlic clove peeled and grated into the pot

1 lemon zested and juiced (about 3 tablespoons juice)

Preparation:

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. When the water boils add the pasta and cook until al dente. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water, then drain.

While pasta is cooking, get out a large dutch oven and stir together the oil, butter, walnuts and olives. Cook over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes until fragrant and the walnuts are toasted. Turn off the heat, finely grate the garlic clove and season with 1 1/2 tsp salt and a few grinds of pepper. Stir to combine.

Add the pasta and 1/4 cup pasta water to the walnut mixture, cook over medium low, stirring and adding pasta water as needed until the pasta is well coated. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest and juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with salt and pepper and parmesan cheese.