Salmon and mascarpone cocoa pasta

Last year, I was given some Hotel Chocolat cocoa penne pasta for my birthday. I like chocolate and I like pasta but I've never before had chocolate pasta! Today I made the recommended recipe off the packet - Salmon and mascarpone cocoa pasta - and it was delicious!

I'd certainly never cooked with cocoa pasta before, so it was great that it came with a recipe. A tasty recipe too! And simple.

In fact, this recipe is so simple that I'm not really sure it can be called cooking! The ingredients list is short - pasta, mascarpone, smoked salmon, parmesan and basil - and there is virtually no preparation. (The pasta itself only needs 9-10min to cook, so whoever wrote "30 mins preparation" must have the world's slowest kettle!) Basically, you just cook the pasta, stir in some mascarpone to coat, then stir in the flaked smoked salmon (buying trimmings is great for this), grated parmesan and torn basil leaves.

I could really smell the chocolate when the pasta was cooking but the taste itself was quite subtle. Really nice, though. That said, this recipe should work great with regular pasta, and next time we will probably make it with the normal stuff. (The cocoa pasta is not cheap - definitely present material rather than everyday food!)