How to: Make Chocolate Pasta

Sweet or savory, this unusual pasta is a chocolate lover’s dream.

There’s nothing like fresh, handmade pasta. Not only is it tastier than the dried stuff, it’s easy to customize with any flavor combination you can dream up. One of my favorites – and Jade’s, too! – is this chocolate version. The addition of cocoa powder to pasta dough may sound crazy, but it works! After all, chocolate has been used in savory dishes around the world for centuries – think of Mexico’s deep, dark mole. The cocoa adds a subtle backbone that makes you wonder just what’s giving the dish its complex character.

I first cooked up this recipe for an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show, as a creative way of combining two of Conan’s favorite foods: chocolate and pasta. He loved it – and so has everyone else I’ve cooked it for since! Once you’ve got the pasta dough made, the toppings you choose can swing the pendulum toward sweet or savory: For a main course, salty prosciutto and peas complement the cocoa’s hidden depths. For an unexpected dessert, a citrus-scented cream sauce boosts the decadence factor to 11.