Pasta with Vegetables: The Italian Philosophy

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Hazan's pasta with vegetables — specifically her approach to pasta con le verdure — articulates a principle that is misunderstood outside Italy: the vegetable is not a topping on pasta. It is the sauce. The vegetable must be cooked in a fat (olive oil, butter, or both) until its flavour has fully developed, its water has evaporated or concentrated, and the result coats the pasta as a sauce rather than sitting on it as a garnish.

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The fat-soluble compounds in each vegetable (the sulphur compounds of broccoli, the cauliflower's indoles, the artichoke's cynarin) extract into the cooking fat during the vegetable preparation and then coat the pasta. This is (Fat-Soluble Aromatic Transfer) applied to the vegetable-pasta relationship.