Strawberry Pasta

What? That's probably what you're saying when you saw the title of this post. That's certainly what my husband said. When I've described it to people, they sort of cringed. Actually when I saw the finished result of the pasta, I wondered just what it was that I was going to serve my family.

Now that I've talked it "up" sufficiently -- here it goes.
Spaghetti, cream, butter, fresh strawberries and fresh grated parmesan.

Puree and strain the strawberries.
Cook the pasta and mix with the grated cheese. Bring the butter and cream to a simmer. Pour the strained berries over the pasta, followed by the steaming butter cream mixture and toss.

What we had then was Pink Pasta.

It actually didn't look all that good. But the people at Intercourses were on to something, but fell a bit short. The first taste was surprising. Light, summery, fruity. The parmesan added just the right amount of zip. A & J really like it. A actually asked for 3 servings and J asked for a second serving (albeit very small servings, they aren't even 3 years old yet). Hubby took seconds. I stuck with my original serving.

During the entire dinner, I kept thinking of what would have made it better. The best I could come up with were these ideas:

Use angel hair pasta instead of spaghetti.

Instead of cream and butter, perhaps a cream or cream cheese and cottage cheese mixture. Something to make it creamier, yet still retain some texture to it (large curd cottage cheese, so it wouldn't all melt down in the heating.

Maybe adding some chopped strawberries to the final toss. I think that was the biggest problem. There was such a small hint of strawberry; it was a tease; you couldn't help but look for the strawberries.

I also thought, expanding upon my Hubby's comment that the pasta tasted like "dessert," that maybe you could actually create this dish with a small pasta like Farfellini or Cappelletti, cottage cheese, chopped up strawberries and maybe something else like kiwi or banana. It would definitely take some experimenting. I'm not sure I'm up for that, but anyone else is certainly welcome to try it and let me know their results. (hmmm -- guest blog?)

All in all - O.K. More of a surprise than a disappointment. Aphrodisiac qualities? No.