Today I am sharing this easy & healthy pasta with a broccoli-based sauce, which is generously covered with basil-flavored breadcrumbs and peperone crusco!
Broccoli per se are quite tasty, but not everyone´s favorites. So for this sauce, I first pan-fried the broccoli florets with some olive oil and anchovies (for extra flavor – for a vegan version just omit them!). This by itself can be a great pasta sauce! The best part is that you can do all this while the pasta cooks!
Next, to give it a crunchier texture, I pan-fried breadcrumbs with some oil for flavor (you can do this in the oven as well, but takes longer), and combined them with basil which goes really well with broccoli! 😀 For the breadcrumbs, I always use panko (japanese version) because they have a different, bigger texture 🙂
Lastly, I added dried flakes of peperone crusco, a delicacy from the south of italy (Basilicata to be precise) which is a dried (hence crunchy) sweet red bell pepper. So not spicy at all! As it might be difficult to get, you can substitute it with some sweet paprika or, if adventurous, some chili flakes! Enjoy!
