Pesto Pasta Special

Pesto Pasta Special

This one comes from Jo Pratt’s In the Mood for Food (again!) – definitely one of my darlings of the moment. It comes from the Lazy chapter, and is basically pasta with pesto sauce with a few additions.

The recipe is very loose "as much pasta as you fancy", with the following added in at will: balsamic vinegar, pesto, olive oil, 1 ripe tomato, 1 red onion, olives, seasoning and Parmesan cheese. I used orrechetti pasta and (I can’t help myself) I changed the recipe a bit! It is still Jo’s recipe really, but I used the ingredients in a different order. I used the olive oil to fry the red onion (2) for 5 minutes, then added in (3) tomatoes and the olives to warm through in the heat of the pan. Everything else was just added in as per recipe. It’s a really successful blend, much better than just basic pesto sauce, pasta and Parmesan (- well to me anyway!), and little one liked it which is a real consideration now. I made it in about 20 mins, but if you were really pushed it could be done faster, I’ve never managed to achieve the hit the kitchen running Ready Steady Cook type speed.

This is the third pasta I’ve cooked from this book, the others being Creamy caramelized Onion & Parmesan pasta and Creamy pea, bacon and Brie pasta. They were both been lovely, but my little one was not so keen on the onion one, so won’t make it again for a good while, but she loved the Brie. It’s funny I thought it would have been the other way round. Feeding children is a real learning curve!