Welcome! Happy Thursday!

Today I would like to share with you my Italian breadcrumbs recipe. This is such an easy recipe, and even easier to use.

If you lean regularly on quick pasta dinners, like spaghetti bolognese or simple creamy pasta’s, I promise you, you will greatly appreciate this recipe!

It’s a recipe booster, taking simple food a step up without too much effort. The crunchy salty punch of flavour from the breadcrumbs sprinkled over a simple creamy spaghetti is one of my favorite fast comfort foods. Add some lemon zest to it and it’s a five-star dish that took a minute longer than the pasta took to cook in the first place.

The breadcrumbs themselves are toasted or more- lightly fried with herbs and garlic, and for those of us who enjoy it, a nice hit of chilli too. Once completely cooled, I add parmesan to the mix and pop it in a jar in the fridge. Because it is fried and has a good amount of salt in it, it will last a good while in your fridge without going bad. Months even. Very handy indeed!

I have seen many variations of this recipe including the use of anchovies or speck which you can also do, however I like to keep it as simple as possible so that I can use it on a wider variety of dishes, and I’ll apply the anchovies or speck to the pasta sauce instead.

The other thing I would like to say is that I first tried this over quite a dry pasta as many recipes recommend; I found this quite unenjoyable and did not try again for a very long time. It was dry on dry and it just didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t until I tried it over a creamy saucy pasta that the lightbulb went on for me. Further proof that with food, it can take trying an item a few different ways until you find what works for you.

There is always a bit of crusty stale bread laying around, so there is always an abundance of opportunity to whip this up. And the more I have made it, the more uses I have found for it! I recently tried it sprinkled over a juicy buttery piece of steak and it was divine! Equally good on potato or pasta bakes or even over zucchini, drizzled with oil and a touch of extra parmesan cheese then roasted. Those crunchy melty zucchini wedges are another favourite both with my family and with guests.

My constant goal is to make the kitchen approachable for you and this is one very easy card to keep in your back pocket to boost a simple meal and make it so moorish you will start to crave it on a regular basis.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Leftover bread, my favourite is Turkish bread, but any slightly stale bread will work.

Parsley, about a handful, finely chopped.

Chilli flakes/powder- a pinch or so- you do you on this front. If chilli is not your thing, or you would like to slowly build up your chilli tolerance, adding white pepper is a good alternative.

Salt- a good sprinkling. Taste at the end after adding parmesan to see if you need more. You want it to be a little salty especially when applied to a creamy sauce.

Parmesan, grated, depending on how much bread you have you can be quite generous with this. For about 2 cups of breadcrumbs, I would use 1/3 of a cup of parmesan. You can also use the dried shelf parmesan for this recipe (just use a little less). I often have a packet or two of these in my freezer set aside for uses just like this.

Garlic powder, 1/2 tsp

Lemon zest, finely grated (1 large lemon)

Olive oil, a good glug! (About 2 Tablespoons)

Method:

Process leftover bread in a Thermomix or food processor until it has become a fine-ish crumb.

Into a hot frying pan, add a good glug of olive oil, you may need to add a touch later if there is quite a lot of breadcrumbs.

Once the oil is hot, add your breadcrumbs and stir well so that the oil is absorbed through the breadcrumbs as evenly as possible.

If you are using fresh Parsley, add to the fry-pan now along with the garlic powder, a couple of pinches of good quality salt, chilli flakes (to your preference) and the finely grated lemon zest. Do not add the parmesan till the very end.

You are then toasting the breadcrumbs in the pan and want to keep slowly stirring them until they are golden brown.

Remove from pan, add parmesan once cooled.

You want the breadcrumbs completely cooled before jarring them up and popping in your fridge or else they will sweat in the jar and become soggy.