Penne with caramelised onions in a yogurt sauce

Look out cream, its all about the yogurt now for me when it comes dressing pasta in a rich white sauce. The advantage of yogurt over cream is of course its lower fat content, but I also love the freshness of it and the slightly tangy sourness it brings to a dish. It is used to dress pasta in the Middle East a lot, with Ottolenghi including a shell pasta dish with a yogurt sauce in his book  'Jerusalum'. I had also had the filled pasta in a yogurt sauce (manti) in Turkey, which is similar to the sauce for Turkish eggs. Today I had a yogurt sauce with sweet, caramelised onions and some piquent pine nuts.


What you will need
3-4 onions
2 cloves garlic
304 table spoons low fat natural yogurt
1 table spoon pine nuts
1 tea spoon paprika
Penne pasta
Parmesan
Lemon thyme


Firtly, peel and thinly slice the onions. Heat a table spoon of oil in a pan and gently caramelise the onions for 15-20 minutes until softened and golden brown. Keep stirring so as not to burn.

Whilst the onions are cooking, crush the garlic and add the yogurt, seasoning well. Top with the lemon thyme leaves. Leave the sauce aside to get up to room temperature.

Place enough penne on to cook for two people.  Once cooked, drain and stir through the yogurt sauce.


Finally add the pine nuts to a dry pan with the paprika and toast for 1 minute.

Serve the pasta topped with the onions, pine nuts and freshly grated parmesan.

Gipsy Spread of course had some pork sausages with his and we both had some of this very decadent garlic pizza bread with it. After all, the whole point of the 5:2 diet is that I can indulge on a '5' day.