Sunflower mince pasta can be made so many ways. And there are so many reasons to love sunflower mince. One of them is that it can be stored in a cupboard for a long time and easily added to meals if you are looking for extra protein.
Which is what I did with this meal. This is sunflower mince pasta Agrodolce, adapted from Jamie Oliver’s recipe in Superfood family classics.
I felt it needed some more protein to make it more balanced and to help it go further to another meal in the week. Sunflower mince was the perfect addition. Added in only 5 minutes at the end it doesn’t need any special preparation.
Agrodolce means sweet and sour which I don’t think this is the most traditional way of cooking it but it was very tasty indeed! I had never cooked onions and peppers this way before, and it really worked.
Serves 4-5
Ingredients:
- 2 red onions
- 2 red peppers
- 2 yellow peppers
- 50g Pine nuts
- Olive oil
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 1/2 tsp crushed chillis
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 120g raisins
- 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 x tins plum tomatoes
- 76g sunflower mince
- 300g wholewheat fusilli
- 75g ricotta or feta
- 4 sprigs of basil (I used parsley as I didn’t have any basil)
Method:
- Peel onions and place in a large pan of boiling salted water with the peppers. Sit something on top like a colander to keep the veg submerged. Boil for 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile lightly toast the pine nuts in a large casserole pan until golden, tossing often then remove to a pate
- Use tongs to gently remove the vegetables and leave the water on the lowest heat (you’ll use this for the pasta later).
- Remove the stalks from the peppers and once cool enough to handle, roughly chop them along with the onions.
- Add 1tbsp oil to the casserole pan. Finely slice the garlic. Add this with the fennel seeds, crushed chillis and cinnamon. Fry till lightly golden
- Finely chop the raisins and stir into the pan with the onions and peppers and cook for 15 minutes.
- Once it’s all starting to catch and caramelise, add the balsamic vinegar and tinned tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.
- Just under half fill each tin with water, swirl around and pour into the pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes stirring occasionally.
- Add the sunflower mince 5 minutes before the end.
- Taste and season as you like.
- Meanwhile, bring the pan of water back to the boil and cook the pasta for 20 minutes.
- Drain the pasta and toss through the cooked sauce.
- Crumble over the feta or ricotta, scatter over the pine nuts and picked herb leaves and serve.