I made the perfect girls night pasta!!! Serve with a fun app like bacon wrapped dates and a protein if you want one (streak? meatballs? chicken piccata? clams?). Perfect with a bottle of white wine OR you can really double down on the martinis and shake up a batch before your guests arrive.
This pasta is salty, tangy, creamy, rich, and just a little funky!! Castelvetrano olives bring their signature buttery, briny flavor, while blue cheese and parmesan melt into a silky cream sauce. Lemon keeps everything bright and balanced!
It feels special enough for a girls night in or date-night dinner but comes together in about the time it takes to boil the pasta.
Use whatever pasta shape you like but the mafaldine is really beautiful and holds she sauce nicely!
Serves: 2
Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
2 servings mafaldine pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, thinly sliced
5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2-3 tablespoons blue cheese or Gorgonzola
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan, plus more as needed
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 cup Castelvetrano olives
3 tablespoons olive brine
1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Up to 1 cup reserved pasta water, as needed
For serving:
Freshly grated parmesan
Finely chopped chives
Red pepper flakes
Blue cheese crumbles, optional
Extra Castelvetrano olives, optional
Instructions
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Cook the mafaldine until al dente, according to package directions.
Before draining, reserve at least 1 cup of pasta water. Drain the pasta and set aside.While the pasta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat.
Add the sliced shallot and garlic. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, until softened and fragrant, about 3–5 minutes. Keep the heat relatively low so the garlic softens without browning or burning.
Add about 1/4 cup reserved pasta water to the skillet, followed by the blue cheese or Gorgonzola.
Stir until the cheese has melted into the liquid and the mixture begins to look creamy.Add another 1/4 cup pasta water, the heavy cream, honey, and 1/4 cup parmesan. Stir each one in as you add it, over low heat until everything is melted and combined into a smooth sauce.
Add the cooked mafaldine along with the lemon zest, lemon juice, black pepper, Castelvetrano olives, and olive brine.
Toss gently until the pasta is completely coated in the sauce.
Add more reserved pasta water, a splash at a time, as needed. The finished sauce should be glossy and loose enough to cling to the pasta rather than feeling thick or heavy.Add additional parmesan to taste — this is a good place to measure with your heart. If you really love blue cheese (and so does whoever else is eating, you can try melting in another tablespoon to make the flavor more pronounced!
Taste before adding any salt. The olives, brine, blue cheese, and Parmesan all bring plenty of salinity on their own.
Divide between bowls and finish with finely chopped chives, red pepper flakes, and plenty of freshly grated parmesan.
For even more blue cheese flavor, add a few crumbles on top along with extra Castelvetrano olives.
Tips
Keep the heat low once the cheese goes in. High heat can cause the cream and cheese sauce to separate. Gentle heat plus starchy pasta water will give you a much silkier sauce.
Don’t skip the pasta water. The starch helps emulsify the cheese, cream, and olive oil into a glossy sauce and lets you adjust the consistency as you toss. It thickens up quickly!
Taste before salting. This pasta gets salt from several different ingredients, especially the olive brine. It may not need any additional salt at all.
Blue cheese versus Gorgonzola: Either works. A milder, creamier Gorgonzola will give you a softer blue-cheese flavor, while a stronger blue cheese will make it more pronounced.
Castelvetrano olives are ideal here because they’re buttery and mild rather than aggressively briny, which keeps the olive flavor from overpowering the creamy sauce.