Lemon Fusilli with Arugula and Broccoli

I've seen Ina Garten make this recipe for Lemon Fusilli with Arugula a few times on her show and it always looked amazingly good. The recipe is also in her new cookbook that I got for Christmas and have been dying to cook my way through.


I halved the amount of pasta but kept everything else the same. I think there was too much arugula, which is funny since we both love arugula. One thing to note is that the recipe in both the cookbook and online doesn't include broccoli even though she makes the dish with broccoli on the show. I, of course, added the broccoli since we love broccoli. I cut one head into bite-size pieces and cooked it in boiling salted water for 3 minutes. I then shocked it in ice water and used the same pot of water to cook the pasta.

As a general rule, lemon and cream don't go well together. For starters, lemon juice can curdle the cream, although I think heavy cream is harder to curdle then milk or half-and-half. There's also a taste issue, mainly that something creamy doesn't necessarily work well with a strong citrus flavor. Even so, I wanted to make this recipe and I thought it was good, but by the end of the bowl I wasn't enjoying it quite as much. I know SP isn't a fan of something when he starts asking me pointed questions about the various ingredients. He ate it and said it was fine, but it isn't something I'll likely make for us again.