Green Pesto Pasta
This dish is easy, delicious, inexpensive and family friendly. For us, I didn’t make it a pasta dish as such, it was more a meat and vegetable dish with some pasta added, feel free to bulk up with vegetables other than what I have listed, I made a rocket pesto to pump up the veggie count. As I have mentioned in the past, I am not very good at measuring things out, so take what I have written with a grain of salt *pardon the pun* and just taste test as you go - particularly the pesto; I like to call this ‘free range cooking’.
What you’ll need:
Pasta of choice (I used Guzzi’s brand linguine, it is just made of free range eggs and Australian durum wheat).
Vegetables of choice (I used broccolini, zucchini, peas, purple onion, spinach).
For pesto:
A hefty handful of rocket
50g of pine nuts
1 Garlic clove
50g Parmesan cheese
A big drizzle of olive oil, adjust as you go for consistency
Sprinkle of salt
Goats feta to garnish (I LOVE Meredith Valley)
Chicken tenderloins
What to do:
Heat pan on medium heat and drizzle with olive oil and cook the chicken tenderloins for 3-4 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Set aside.
Boil water for the pasta, and add pasta once boiling (remember up the top I said this isn’t a ‘pasta dish’ as such, so you don’t want to cook a lot of pasta, maybe half of what you usually would for a spag bol). Strain pasta and set aside.
Cut up onion into thick slices and sauté in the same pan until it starts to change colour and softens, then add all other vegetable to the pan. Leave the spinach leaves until the very end so they are just lightly wilted. Put on a low heat and cover.
Place all pesto ingredients in a blender and slowly pulse, checking the consistency and taste testing until you are happy with both flavour and consistency; then add to pan and mix through the vegetable and add cooked chicken and pasta back in. You may need to use two forks to seperate the pasta so it doesn’t stick together and just one person eating the dish hits the jackpot! Now would be a good time to add the spinch.
Serve up making sure you get a mix of everything, then break up goats feta over the top, sprinkle with pine nuts and some good quality rock salt.