Conchiglie with Yogurt and Peas

I’ve had my eye on the reportedly magical concoction of conchiglie with yogurt and peas for over a year now. When a craving for pasta led me to the refrigerator in search of a sauce, I found myself looking at a tub of leftover Greek yogurt and some feta.

I always have a bag of frozen peas – to toss in with a fried egg and rice – on hand, and my basil plants are growing like crazy. “The conchigle…”, I thought.

I took many liberties. Ignoring the pine nuts. Adding the basil when I was ready to eat instead of stirring it in from the get go. I thought this would improve the leftovers, but it turned out the sauce and the peas were much less leftover friendly than the basil. Enjoy this dish right after cooking, and you will have a better experience than eating it for lunch the next day.

If you want to see how this recipe looks the right way, check out this post with pine nuts. To see a picture of how the dish was presented in the cookbook, and to read something much more lovely, click on over to Orangette. Enjoy!

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Conchiglie with Yogurt and Peas

Author adapted from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Yield 6

Ingredients

• 1 lb conchiglie pasta
• 2 1/2 cups plain Greek yogurt
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 lb peas, fresh or frozen & thawed, divided
• 1 2/3 cups fresh basil, torn
• 8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
• salt & pepper (preferably white) to taste

Instructions

1. Cook the conchiglie pasta until al dente in a large pot of boiling, salted water.
2. While the pasta cooks, add the yogurt, 6 tablespoons of the olive oil, garlic, and 2/3 cup of the peas to the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Transfer the sauce to a large bowl & set aside.
3. Add the remaining peas to the pot of pasta during the final minute of cooking, then drain.
4. Very slowly (this is important so the yogurt sauce holds together), add the drained pasta and peas to the bowl of sauce and stir gently to combine.
5. Add the basil and feta cheese and stir or toss gently until the mixture is well coated with sauce.
6. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Notes

The original recipe calls for serving the pasta over pine nuts sauted in olive oil with red pepper flakes. To do this, add 1/2 cup pine nuts and 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes to 4 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, for one to two minutes until the pine nuts are golden and the oil is a deep red color. Remove from the heat transfer to individual serving dishes until ready to be topped with the pasta. Or sprinkle the pine nut mixture over the pasta. It's your call.