linguine with carrot ribbons and lemon-ginger butter: the verdict

Last night I finally tried the linguine with carrot ribbons recipe I was raving about last week.

I made a few substitutions and changes:

-whole wheat spaghetti in place of white linguine

-olive oil in place of butter (and a lot less of it – the recipe called for 2 oz, or 56 g, of butter, but I used about 4 teaspoons of olive oil)

-a bit more ginger

-the Epicurious recipe used 8 oz (about 225 g) of pasta for 4 first-course servings, but I served it as a main course for two and used 300 g (about 10.5 oz), though to be fair, my serving was only 100 g, while Pete's was 200 g.

-I stuck with approximately the same amounts of carrot and peppers.

-I reduced the amount of parmesan used (about 20 g instead of the 2/3 cup, or 150 grams (!!) called for)

The result: pretty decent, for a first try. I think when you try to take a lot of the fat out of a dish, some tweaking is always required. Next time I make this (and it was definitely tasty enough to warrant a second try), I will fine-tune the recipe further:

-I'll stick with olive oil, but use a bit more, maybe 2 tablespoons, to give the pasta a more coated texture

-even more ginger and lemon peel

-more carrot (the ginger-carrot combo was the star of the dish)

-a bit more parmesan, maybe 50 grams

What I'll really take away from the dish was that wonderful carrot-ginger flavour. I think it would be great in an autumn salad – spinach, grated carrot, goats cheese, and a ginger dressing maybe?