Fresh Linguine Pasta with Green Olive Tapenade
This is one of the easiest pasta dishes you can make and you only need a few ingredients from your pantry. Eggs, flour, olives, cheese, and herbs. Just a few ingredients, can turn your dull quarantine night, into a sensational dinner. This fresh linguine pasta recipe, to me, is an essential one to keep in your back pocket because of the flavors of the castelvetrano olives. Especially when you don’t have much lying around, either in your refrigerator or your pantry.
The other thing I love about this recipe is it really speaks to rustic Italian cooking. Italian cuisine is all about utilizing a few great ingredients, simply prepared, but executed to perfection. Here is the recipe for tarragon linguine with green olive tapenade, I hope you enjoy it!
Basic Egg Pasta with Tarragon
- 3 whole eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 3 cups 00 flour or all purpose
- 1 1/2 tbsp chopped tarragon
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 splash water
Green Olive puree
- 12 oz castelvetrano olives
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 cup olive oil
Garnish Ingredients
- 2 tbsp butter (plus more if you need it)
- 1 lemon
- 3 oz parmesan cheese
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- 3 tbsp basil leaves
For the green olive
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For the green olive puree (tapenade) place olives and garlic into a food processor. Puree and add the oil during the process. No need to season because of the saltiness of the olives.
How to make Basic Egg Pasta
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Place flour in a bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour. Add eggs, water, chopped tarragon, and salt. With a fork stir the egg mixture until it starts to form a ball of dough. Then use your hands to form the dough.
Add more flour if the dough is wet. Knead the pasta for 5 minutes and then cover and rest for 30 minutes. Take your pasta and cut in half. Leave one half covered while you work with the other half. Take the half of the pasta with a rolling pin and roll until the dough is thin enough to fit inside the biggest setting on your pasta machine ( I use the kitchenaid attachment).
Then run the pasta all the way down to the lowest setting twice. Dusting the dough with flour if it is too wet. Then on the third time run it down to the second or third to last setting. Again, Use a little flour for dusting. You should have long sheets at this point, Cut the sheet into 1 1/2 feet long pieces.
Then switch your attachment to the linguine (spaghetti or fettuccine will work if that is all you have, or you could cut the linquine by hand by dusting the pasta sheets heavily with semolina flour and then rolling up your sheet and cutting them, the attachment is much faster)
Dust the pasta heavily with semolina and run it through the attachment. Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment and more semolina flour. Continue the process until you have some like this
To Finish
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Simply bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Place the pasta in the pot and cook for 2 minutes. Then in a hot saucepan add 1/3 cup of olive tapenade to the pan along with 1/2 cup of pasta water. Strain out the pasta and place it in the pan. Toss the pasta with the olive puree, add butter, lemon juice and zest if desired.
Season with salt and pepper. Taste the pasta and see if it needs any adjusting (maybe more olive or salt) Then place on the plate using a two pronged fork. Top the pasta with parmesan, chile flakes, and basil leaves. Serve and enjoy!
