Methi and garlic really go well together. So do pasta, garlic and wilted greens. Hence we decided to try and make Methi fettucine and it makes a delcious pasta meal.

Methi greens are very popular in Indian cuisine. You might know about the fenugreek seeds used as a spice, methi leaves are the fenugreek greens. They are slightly bitter and work great to balance rich or pungent flavors. Dried methi leaves called kasuri methi are used in the creamy butter chicken to balance the sweetness of the cream. My favorite methi greens dish is the one made by my mom by stir-frying methi with lot of garlic and green chilli (A recipe by Pooja of Lazy2cook blog can be found here).

In summer you can grow your own methi using fenugreek seeds even in pots indoors. Many times you can find it in indian grocery stores. In Madison Woodman’s is known to carry methi bunches and so does India House.

When stir fried methi wilts down to a very small quantity, so a bunch is only enough in the end for a single person. We used two bunches for the two of us.

Methi comes with thicker stems which take time to cook. If you are going to cook methi really quickly its a good idea to de-stem and collect just the leaves for cooking.

Using fresh uncooked pasta rather than dried one is what we prefer. Now a days most stores carry products from local pasterias and those are the ones we prefer. At hyvee in fitchburg we are easily able to find RP’s pasta produced right here in Madison. Update: Our reader Pat has also left a tip that this is also available at Metcalfes and Copp’s and some other brands are also available. If you can’t find fresh pasta and wont brave making some yourself you could use dried pasta.

We also had been to madison sourdough bakery in the morning and had picked up a quarter of their sourdough miche so we also decided to cut us up a slice of that to have it as a side.

The mise en place consisted then of methi leaves, fresh pasta, garlic, pepper flakes and some parmigiano reggiano.

We prefer butter with the fresh fettucine instead of olive oil. In this case it also allows methis flavor to shine being less neutral than olive oil. We start by melting some butter and throwing in the smashed roughly chopped garlic in the pan. Meanwhile we set a pan with water to boil for the pasta with some sea salt.

We cooked on medium heat, making sure the garlic didn’t color and added the methi leaves. Meanwhile we added the pasta once the water is boiling and cooked it for about 3 minutes, draining immediately and at that point reserving some cooking water.

As the methi greens wilted they got bright green and we added some chilli flakes.

We then grabbed the drained pasta.

We added the pasta to the pan and some pasta cooking water and just bring it all together and barely cooked further till some of the added water was reduced.

We then served the pasta in the bowl and it got a grating of the cheese.

A few sprinkles of red pepper flakes and the methi fettucine was ready to be served.

We served it with some of the sourdough miche grilled and brushed with olive oil.

Update: One of our friends Lakshmi has commented she would try this with potato gnocchi and since potato and methi are also friends we can already see it work and can’t wait to try it ourselves.

Methi Fettucine

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★★★★★

4.5 from 2 reviews

• Author: BreakingNaan
• Total Time: 20 mins
• Yield: serves 2 people 1x

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Description

Methi and garlic really go well together. So do pasta, garlic and greens. Hence we decided to try and make Methi fettucine and it makes a delcious pasta meal.

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Ingredients

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• 4 cups methi leaves
• 4 to 6 pods of peeled garlic smashed and roughly chopped
• 125 gm fresh fettucine
• 2 tsp butter
• 0.5 tsp red chilli flakes
• 4 tsp grated parmigiano reggiano

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Instructions

1. Boil 4 cups water for the pasta
2. When water boils, add pasta and cook till al dente; about 3 minutes for fresh pasta
3. Strain pasta immediately and reserve a tablespoon of cooking water
4. melt the butter in the pan
5. add the garlic and cook without coloring the garlic on medium heat
6. add the methi greens and mix with the garlic and butter and wilt till bright green
7. add a pinch of red chilli flakes
8. add the pasta and bring everything together and add the reserved pasta water
9. cook slightly till the added water is slightly reduced
10. serve pasta in a bowl and add grated parmigiano reggiano and a sprinkling of chilli flakes for garnish

• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 10 mins
• Category: Entree
• Cuisine: Indian italian