Light, satisfying pasta dish, perfect for Meatless Mondays.
Pasta with Pesto
By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
In fall, often the question comes up of what to do with our gardens and herb pots as we ready for the first frost and how to save all of that delicious bounty.
Those monstrously huge basil plants! You’ll have to harvest those aromatic leaves before the cold touches them.
One way is to chop the basil and set with a little oil and freeze in ice cube trays, then pop them out to store frozen. From there, they are easily added to freshly made spaghetti and marinara sauces. Or if you are a little more adventurous and have a supply, you can proceed to pesto with some crunchy pine nuts with their crisp and nutty aromas.
Or if you are hungry now (as I suspect you might be after thinking of all the ways you might use fresh basil) you might like a quick and light lunch, especially suited for Meatless Monday, and which is both healthy and delicious.
This pasta will take all of about 15 minutes to make once your pasta water is boiling. I like to serve this with a slice of sourdough bread spread with soft creamy butter and my usual glass of iced tea with lemon.
I’d say I would bake that bread myself, but I have become enamored of the excellence of Sixteen Bricks artisan bakehouse here in Cincinnati. And oh-em-gee, I think it may easily be the most flavorful, tangy bread I have ever eaten, and the crumb is perfect, like French bread- light and airy and crispy. Not that heavy laden brick you sometimes find for sale. So I definitely need to up my game there and practice my bake craft when it comes to bread, because nothing I’ve baked has come close to that. The gauntlet has been dropped. Talk to me about it in 2018! 😀
But for now I rule the pasta to go with it. And you will too once you master this simple, clean recipe.
Join me tomorrow when I share my recipe for Chicken Paprikash, which I had hoped to get posted a couple weeks ago. Originally tomorrow was supposed to be my Mini Pizza Bites for National Pizza Day, but that blogger event got rescheduled to Thursday, so look for that to make its appearance then.
Wednesday I’ll be doing a group posting with other bloggers for National Pear Day with my recipe for Roasted Pear Quiche. Are you intrigued by that title? It’s delicious.
Join me each day!
~s
Pasta with Pesto
Ingredients:
- 10 ounces bow tie pasta, cooking according to package directions
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 4-5 cloves garlic, sliced
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 tablespoon prepared basil pesto
- 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- salt and black pepper (to taste)
- pinch red pepper flakes
- 1 tablespoon sliced fresh basil leaves
Method:
- Cook pasta according to package directions in boiling salted water, then drain and set aside.
- Saute garlic in olive oil until it browns slightly then stir in the peas and let those heat and cook for a minute.
- Toss that with remaining ingredients and cooked pasta, topped with shredded basil.
From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com
