Spaghetti is more than Spaghetti Bolognese:

Now don’t get me wrong, I love spaghetti Bolognese, the spaghetti with red sauce and meatballs that is most familiar to Americans.  However, Italians are extremely inventive and have all manner of delicious ways of eating pasta in general and spaghetti in particular.  I tried a new spaghetti dish—well, it was meant for linguine, but works really well with whole wheat spaghetti—the other day and it has quickly become a favorite of mine.  Like most Italian food, it is so simple to prepare and yet so tasty.

What I’m talking about is spaghetti with pesto and cheese.  I added to this dish a topping of toasted pine nuts, more cheese, shrimp, and a chopped parsley garnish.

Pesto is one of glories of Italian food, a simple mix of pine nuts, fresh basil, olive oil, garlic, and salt (well the salt can be optional, I think) that is used in so many ways.   The stuff is incredibly easy to make; one only needs a food process, like a Cuisinart, to whip up pesto.  Of course, a pestle and mortar will do the job too.  Just a bit more troublesome. 

The following pesto recipe makes 4 servings.  One of the many nice things about pesto is that stays well in the fridge and can also be frozen.  So here’s the recipe:

¼ cup of fresh basil leaves

4 large garlic cloves, skin peeled, but not mashed (the food processor does that for you)

3-4 tablespoons of pine nuts

5 tablespoons of Olive Oil

½ teaspoon of salt

 

Put these ingredients in your food processor and let her rip.  After a couple of minutes, you’ll have enough fresh, delicious pesto for 4 servings of the spaghetti dish I’m describing here.

 

Once the pesto is done, mix it with some cheese.  You do 4 tablespoons of freshly grated pecorino and ½ cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.  Since the pecorino, which is all imported from Italy, is terribly expensive and got pricier with our ex-President’s trade wars with Europe (why doesn’t Biden reverse that stupid policy?!!), I simply used all Parmesan.  It still tasted wonderful.  Note, I put in domestic Parmesan from Trader Joe’s, which is just fine.  Plus, pecorino cheese is a real pain to grate.

 

In the meantime, boil the pasta, cooking it al dente.  Once the pasta is ready, mix it in with the pesto cheese combination.  If you’re just cooking for yourself, as I was, just add a quarter of the pesto cheese mix to the one serving of cooked pasta and set aside the rest of the mix to put in the fridge or freezer.  It will keep just fine until next time you want to eat this yummy pasta dish.  When using the leftovers, all you’ll need to do is cook the spaghetti for a quickly prepared and delicious meal.  How great is that!

 

To ramp up things with this recipe, I put in a personal touch.  Since shrimp pairs well with pasta, I put 5 medium cooked shrimp—these were Trader Joe’s medium frozen shrimp thawed out—and a generous portion of toasted pine nuts on top of the pasta.  Then I added more freshly grated Parmesan cheese to the top.  As a final touch, you can use a whole parsley sprigs or a bit of chopped parsley as a garnish.

Here are two photos of the dish, the first one is with the topping of extra fresh grated Parmesan cheese, the other is a picture of the dish before the extra cheese was added.





 

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