Pasta Primavera with Pork

 In 1975, New York chef Sirio Maccioni flew to the Canadian summer home of Italian Baron Carlo Amato, called Shangri-La Ranch located on Robert's Island, Nova Scotia. Maccioni and his two top chefs began experimenting with game and fish, but eventually the baron and his guests wanted something different. Maccioni then mixed butter, cream and cheese, with vegetables and pasta and brought the recipe back to New York City. The fame of pasta primavera traces back to Maccioni's New York City restaurant Le Cirque, where it first appeared as an unlisted special before it was made famous through a 1977 article in the New York Times by Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey which included a recipe for the dish. The invention of the dish is contested; Le Cirque co-owner Sirio Macchioni claimed that his wife Egidiana threw it together from ingredients on hand during a trip to Nova Scotia; Ed Giobbi, an amateur cook himself, claims to have shown Macchioni and Jean Vergnes (then chef at Le Cirque) a similar dish which Vergnes then slightly modified, and chef Franco Brigandi claims to have invented it while the maitre d' at Il Gatto Pardo Ristorante in New York City and prepared it for Bob Lape on WABC television before his dish was requested to be cooked by other culinary practitioners^. All accounts agree that Vergnes refused to allow the dish to be prepared in the kitchen, so that the many requests for it had to be satisfied with a pot set up in a hallway. The combination of lightly cooked vegetables and pasta, which Claiborne and Franey hailed as "by far, the most talked-about dish in Manhattan", is widely recognized as one of the signature developments of American cuisine in the 1970s. (Wikipedia)

This is a twist on pasta primavera (with meet)

What you need

For the pork

• 2 x 200g pork chops,
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

and the marinade

• 3 tbsp tomato purée
• 1,5 tbsp soy sauce
• 1,5 tbsp honey
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar

For the pasta

• 25g unsalted butter
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 200g beans, blanched
• 100g fresh peas or frozen
• 200g spinach
• 300g cooked tagliatelle (reserve some cooking water)
• 1 lemon, juice and zest
• large handful fresh available herbs, for example mint, basil, dill and parsley, chopped
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 20g hazelnuts, toasted and lightly crushed
• parmesan
• olive oil, for drizzling

How to prepare it

For the pork

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Preheat a griddle pan until hot.
3. For the pork, rub one tablespoon of the olive oil over the pork chops, then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
4. Place the chops onto the griddle and cook for 1-2 minutes on either side, until golden-brown griddle marks appear on both sides.
5. Meanwhile, place all the marinade ingredients into a bowl and whisk to combine. Spoon the marinade over the pork chops and transfer to the oven for 6-7 minutes, or until completely cooked through.

For the pasta

1. Heat the butter in a pan, add the garlic and fry for one minute.
2. Add thevegetables and stir fry for 1-2 minutes.
3. Add the pasta and a little of the cooking water to the pan and stir to combine.
4. Stir in the lemon juice and zest and the herbs and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
5. To serve, sprinkle over the hazelnuts, the parmesan and drizzle with olive oil.