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Winter Pesto with Pasta | ![]() |
Snow Days. Mid-week, they’re life-slowing brakes that kids crave and grown-ups part-welcome, part-dread.
But if snowy days are good for snowboot and sled sales, snow days can also be gentle reminders of why the place we most want to be is called ‘home’ and how little control, really, we exert in our lives.
So give in. Be with the snow.
Once the flakes begin to transform our familiar neighborhoods into other-worlds, stop, watch, listen.
And as the white mantle muffles and then silences, fill a pot with cider, pull out the Monopoly box, dust off that get-around-to-it-soon novel by the bed. Make soup, bake cookies. If you must, clean the basement, organize a closet.
But for a few hours, a day or two at most, your life belongs to the snow.
Soon enough, it will be yours again. The plow will move through, the drive will need shoveling. And life, again, will move full speed.
WINTER PESTO with PASTA
Time-to-table: 30 minutes
Makes 1½ cups pesto (enough for 1½ pounds pasta)
- Dried or fresh pasta (2 ounces per serving)
- 1 cup toasted walnuts
- About 5 ounces (4 cups) fresh spinach
- 1 cup (or more) good grated Parmesan
- 4 large cloves of garlic
- 1 teaspoon basil
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- Pepper to taste
- 3 – 4 tablespoons good olive oil
PESTO
Bring salted water to a boil. It takes 20 minutes to make the pesto, so time the pasta so it’ll finish cooking then. Drain, return pasta to hot pan.
Blend all pesto ingredients except olive oil in a food processor and process until smooth, cleaning sides occasionally. Add olive oil a tablespoon at a time until pesto achieves consistency of creamy peanut butter.
Toss pesto with hot pasta, about ½ cup for every 8 ounces of pasta.
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© Copyright 2006 Kitchen Parade
hello - know this recipe was posted some time ago, but i needed a cabbage recipe, so i decided to try cabbage with winter pesto.
ReplyDeletei LOOOOOVVVVEEEEE this pesto. it is rich, but it is delicious. i'm serving it to my non-gluten-allergic husband tonight over egg noodles!
3/16/2006
Isn't it GREAT?! And so easy, too. It is rich but I love it in small dollops for it really packs flavor. THANK YOU for making my day!!
ReplyDelete3/16/2006
Alanna: fresh or dried herbs in the pesto?
ReplyDeleteLeslie - Dried, it's winter! (But thanks for asking, that's a detail that I often missed in early columns.)
ReplyDeleteI get a different point amount when I use my on-line calculator!!! I am not sure if your points are right,,
ReplyDeletehow do you get your points info??
Which version are you questioning? The pesto with the pasta or just the pesto? I do see that the pesto itself alone should be one point, not two -- likely the result of using the manual 'slide' calculator for a long while, it always skewed down. Now I have the math in Excel, it's never on the cusp.
ReplyDelete