Welcome everybody to the February edition of the Crazy Ingredient Challenge!  If you are a first time visitor to the Crazy Ingredient Challenge, you are in for some fun creativity! The challenge is to create a recipe with two truly unique ingredients that are not traditionally cooked together.I just love this challenge! Spearheaded by the lovely Dawn at Spatula’s On Parade, this is one group of talented chef’s who come up with these recipes each month. Want to know what February’s challenge is? Lemon & Basil!

As far as I was concerned this time, the possibilities are endless. I absolutely love lemon!!  And basil is a favorite herb of mine too. I feel like this month the ingredients were picked just for me!  My first thought went to a piccata or some type of pasta sauce with shrimp. But that would be too easy. I asked “why not put BOTH ingredients right into the pasta?” Meaning in the dough. So that’s what I did.

I know a lot of you probably don’t have a KitchenAid stand mixer or the pasta attachments.  This recipe utilizes my stand mixer as well as the Gourmet Pasta Press attachment. I just love this attachment since it’s so easy to use. It comes with six different interchangeable plates to cut pasta into various shapes, from rigatoni to fusilli.  It’s fantastic since the arthritis in my hands makes manual kneading difficult at best. If you want, you can modify the recipe and turn your dough into lasagna noodles by rolling it out yourself then cutting it into strips.

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Lemon Basil Rigatoni with a Fresh Veggie Wine Sauce

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Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (sifted)
• 4 Large eggs
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 5 - 8 leaves fresh basil (finely chopped)
• zest of one lemon
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic (crushed)
• 2 Large roma tomatoes (chopped)
• 6oz fresh mushrooms (sliced)
• 1 cup light white wine
• 1/2 bunch fresh spinach leaves
• 2 tablespoons capers
• juice of half a lemon
• 1 -2 tablespoon flour

Directions

Step 1

In the bowl of your mixer, add the flour, eggs, basil, 2 tablespoons lemon juice and lemon zest. Set mixer to 1 and mix using the flat beater. Replace with the dough hook and mix on setting 2 for 2 minutes. If the mix is too crumbly, add a bit of water, a teaspoon at a time until it just forms. Remove the dough and knead for about two minutes. Set dough aside to "rest" for 20 minutes.

Step 2

Attach the pasta press to the mixer. Divide the dough into balls about the size of a golf ball. Set the mixer to speed 6 and insert one at a time into the pasta press and slice to the size desired. Repeat until all dough is passed through.

Step 3

Heat a large pot of boiling water. While that is coming to a boil, add olive oil to a large deep skillet on medium. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add mushrooms, tomatoes, and wine. Cook until bubbling just a bit. Add capers, spinach and lemon juice and turn to low. Simmer. Add a bit of flour to thicken the sauce to your desired consistency. Add pasta to the large pot of water and cook until pasta floats to the top. Drain and top with sauce.

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For nutritional information and Points Values, click the Magic Button 

Hubby as usual was skeptical on the lemon part of the ingredient. Last month when we did lemongrass and quinoa, he was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.  So I was hoping he would love this one too. With the addition of the capers in the sauce, I was not so sure. But the Lemon Basil Rigatoni was a hit and he didn’t think the sauce was overly lemony at all. I loved the flavor of the noodles. The lemon flavor was mild but if you got a noodle with some of the zest in it, kapow! It was so delicious.

To see past challenges and the creative recipes our chefs have come up with, click on over to my Crazy Ingredient Challenge Pinboard and look around. These ladies are amazing!!!

Follow Lori’s Culinary’s board Crazy Ingredient Challenge on Pinterest.

Do you want to up your kitchen adventure and be a part of the Crazy Ingredient Challenge? Ready to challenge your culinary mind? Shake it up a bit and have a new adventure in your kitchen in 2015. If you want to be a part of this group, you can request to join our Facebook page or send me an email lorisculinarycreations@hotmail.com.

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