Marmite. You either love it or you hate it.
Nigella Lawson loves it. “I know the combination of pasta and Marmite sounds odd to the point of unfeasibility, but wait a moment,” she writes on her blog.
She stumbled across a recipe for a “day-after-the-roast pasta dish” in Italian-British food writer Anna Del Conte’s memoirs and, realising Marmite’s potential as a replacement for the umami-ness of a stock cube, has been making a version of it on repeat ever since.
“I haven’t as yet found a child who doesn’t like it,” she says.
The simple and speedy dish requires just four easy-to-find ingredients: spaghetti, butter, parmesan (or vegan equivalent) and Marmite.
Packed with saltiness and savouriness, Lawson’s spaghetti with Marmite makes for a tasty midweek meal and, as an added benefit, its main ingredient is also high in vitamin B.
Nigella Lawson’s spaghetti with Marmite
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients:
375g spaghetti
50g unsalted butter
1 tsp Marmite Original (8g)
Freshly grated parmesan cheese (to serve)
For vegans, replace the parmesan cheese and butter with a plant-based alternative.
Method:
Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water, according to the packet instructions.
When the pasta is almost cooked, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the Marmite and 1 tablespoon of the pasta water, mixing thoroughly to dissolve.
Reserve ½ cup of pasta water; then drain the pasta and pour the Marmite mixture over the drained spaghetti, adding a little reserved pasta water to amalgamate if required. Serve with plenty of grated parmesan cheese.
