Blue Cheese Pasta

It's been cooler lately. I noticed the temperature has been reaching 20C at night. Mind you, I'm not complaining. I love the cool weather and I miss a really cold winter. Of course, I don't miss the misery of wet clothes and cold toilet seats! But I do miss layering my clothes when going out. Anyway, as it is cool, I decided to make something creamy this Sunday and what better creamy dish than a creamy pasta with an ice cold creamy drink. Yes it is overkill but then, I like cream. I've always said good things come from cows. (steak, butter, cheese, ice cream, bone marrow, tripe and the list goes on...)

So today, I made my blue cheese pasta. My original recipe calls for chorizo but it seems that the butcher ran out so I had to make do with smoked mettwurst, a strongly-flavoured German pork sausage. My normal cheese sauce also calls for 5 different types of cheese but I've been feeling lazy to go to the cheese room and I also felt I needed to make my ingredients simpler so the version I made today is brand new. I still nailed it though. And to down the pasta with, I just made a plain strawberry smoothie. For the sauce, I didn't use salt. For the smoothie, I didn't use sugar.

The Ingredients

Blue Cheese sauce for pasta - serves 3

• 50 grams blue cheese
• 2 large Swiss brown mushrooms
• 1 smoked mettwurst (or any other strongly-flavoured pork sausage)
• 300ml thickened cream
• Olive oil

Strawberry smoothie - serves 3

• 5 strawberries (3 medium/1 large)
• 4 scoops of Vanilla ice cream
• 150ml fresh milk

And here's how I did the pasta.

smoked mettwurst

Swiss brown mushrooms

thickened cream

blue cheese (cheap variety)

all the ingredients for the sauce laid out

rigatoni - my preference as you get sauce both inside and outside the pasta!

mettwurst & mushrooms - borwn the mushrooms first before throwing in the mettwurst

once browned, pour in the thickened cream (i also like using clotted cream)

throw in the cheese. you can chop it up to make it melt faster

let it simmer until the cheese is thoroughly melted

pour it on the pasta!

toss and serve!

How it's done - Strawberry Smoothie

throw in the strawberries first in the blender

put the ice cream on top

pour in the milk

turn it on! pulse the blender to crush the strawberries then put it on a low setting and blend

blend baby blend!

serve in a chilled glass (optional but it makes the drink look better)

And so, that was my creamy Sunday lunch. Of course, as the pasta is a lot, I'll most likely have this for dinner too. Oh well...