Roasted Garlic Ricotta Pasta Sauce

Ingredients
 1 bulb garlic, roasted 
 1 tablespoon olive oil 
 Pinch kosher salt 
 15-16 oz. ricotta cheese 
 1 lemon, zest only 
 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes 
 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 
 Fusilli Pasta 
 Reserved pasta water 
 Basil, for garnish
 
Roasted Garlic Ricotta Pasta Sauce

This sauce is really easy to make but it does take about a half hour just to roast the garlic bulb. Not that it’s hard though. Toss it in the oven and go do something else for 30 minutes. It’s hard to screw up.

I just slice the top off the bulb and drizzle with some olive oil and kosher salt and wrap it tightly in foil. After 30 minutes, you’ll have a beautiful thing.

If you’ve never had roasted garlic, you are missing out. It’s so good. You can literally just eat the cloves by themselves. They are sweet and flavorful and have just a touch of the garlic bite.

Once they are roasted, you can use your fingers to just squeeze the cloves out of the paper wrapping.

Mash together the garlic cloves with a pinch of salt until they are in a rough paste. Then mix in ricotta, lemon zest, red pepper flakes, and a pinch of black pepper.

Finishing the Sauce

At this point you basically just have a ricotta mixture. The secret to making it a smooth sauce, perfect for pasta, is one thing: hot pasta water.

So, cook your pasta and set your ricotta mixture aside. I like to use fusilli but I guess any pasta works fine. Save about 2 cups of the starchy pasta water.

Then add the ricotta mixture to a pot over low heat in about a 2-1 ratio of ricotta-to-water. So if you’re just making one or two servings, you might add one cup of ricotta mixture with 1/2 cup of hot pasta water.

If you’re making the full batch, you’ll want to add 1 cup of reserved pasta water to the mixture and stir it together over low heat. It’ll turn smooth and creamy in no time.

At this point you can stir some of the cooked pasta into the sauce in the pan if you want.

Or, I actually thought it was better to keep the sauce smooth in the pot, divide the noodles between bowls, and pour the hot sauce over each bowl. You can garnish each bowl with some basil, lemon zest, and red pepper flakes.

You would think this is some kind of fancy cream based pasta sauce, but it’s so easy to make and the roasted garlic totally makes it unique.

Who’s a roasted garlic fan?! Raise your hand!

http://www.macheesmo.com/roasted-garlic-ricotta-pasta-sauce/