Linguine with Tomato Pesto

From Pasta: 222 Easy Recipes, Academia Barilla, VMB Publishers, 2012.

This recipe was for bavette with tomato pesto but with no bavette on hand I decided to use linguine instead.

Three tomatoes were skinned and deseeded. They went into the blender with 15g each of pine nuts, almonds and walnuts, 3 mint leaves, about 30g grated parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and about 2 tablespoons olive oil. These were pureed. The tomato pesto was now ready.

The linguine was cooked until al dente, drained and mixed with the pesto. Some halved cherry tomatoes were added to the plate.

This was a pleasing pasta. There was a grainy texture to the pesto from the nuts but it was quite acceptable. It’s possibly one to keep in mind because it is quick to make and there is no cooking apart from that of the pasta itself.

This is the first recipe I have made from this book from the Academia Barilla, a centre with the purpose of promoting and developing Italian cuisine. Basically the book is in two sections: dried pasta and fresh pasta. In the fresh section instructions are given on how to create the particular shapes of the different forms of pasta. Within these two sections there is a great variety of pastas including baked, pasta salads, non-pasta pasta (gnocchi, etc) and stuffed pasta. I can see the book will get a lot of use from me.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔