Cocoa Pasta

So this is what we had last night for dinner. We bought the pasta at Culinary Conspiracy a while back but I have been looking for the perfect recipe for it. There are lots of dessert recipes but I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. So I decided to just use the sauce recipe on the package, which calls for mascarpone cheese (which we just happened to have for the first time ever - my mom gave it to us), walnuts, garlic, milk and parmesan. We had all of those things so I just had to pick up the parsley and pine nuts.
It was… interesting. First of all, it looked gorgeous. Those pictures don’t do it justice. The pasta was almost black and looked so rich. The overall taste was rich, creamy and very earthy but sort of subtle (we are, however, non-tasters so “subtle” to us may be overpowering to you). We added salt and cracked pepper and that helped to bring out the flavors. It did leave that almost powdery feel to my mouth, like after eating a dark, 85% cocoa chocolate bar. We both thought that it needed something to liven it up, maybe orange zest or something. I would love to experiment with it some more. The package and several sites said it tastes good with game, but I’m still a recovering vegetarian and not quite ready for that.