Pappardelle with Poppy Seeds

Silvana recalls ‚ 'I remember in my childhood, we used to eat the poppy seeds. Some people thought that they made children sleep. They would be made into a pastina to relax the kids.. We used to use a lot of poppy seeds, used to boil them and give the mix to people as sleeping drops'.

'For this sweet pasta which is finished with butter and sugar, it is better to make the pasta without egg because the egg flavour can take over.'

Serves 6

Ingredients

Pasta
300 grams of flour,
4 ml water
pinch of salt
15 ml of olive oil
50 grams of semolina.
Make basic pasta doughin usual manner. Add extra water if needed, but dough should not be soft. Roll out as described above
Poppy seed sauce
200 grams of butter
25 grams of sugar
120 grams of poppy seeds

Method

Melt butter in pan, add about 50 grams of sugar and then the poppy seeds. Take off heat. Cook pappardelle in salted water. Even though this is a sweet dish you still have to put salt in the water because otherwise the flavour of the sugar will come up too much. After the pasta is cooked- approx 2 minutes, drain then toss in the butter.

To increase the sweet/salty contrast, you can eat this papparedelle with grated parmesan.