This dish was unexpectedly rich and flavorful. On first glance, you might expect a toned down flavor profile, but wait till you taste your first bite! Boil a large pot of water and add lots of salt then your mini-penne to cook roughly 9-10 minutes. Meanwhile, take out a food processor…
…and add in some home-made oven roasted tomatoes that are still a bit moist. I flavored our tomatoes with salt, olive oil and some dried oregano. I also added some toasted Italian pine nuts, freshly grated parmesan cheese and some of the olive oil we used to store the tomatoes in. Add a bit of salt (not too much as the cheese can be salty) and lots of cracked black pepper. If you had some garlic confit or slow-cooked garlic that would work well here as well. Blitz this all until it has a classic pesto texture. This one is a bit thick, but don’t fret, you can thin it later when mixing with the pasta.
When the pasta is cooked, drain it, saving some of the pasta water, and toss it with the tomato pesto adding some pasta water if it looks like it needs it. Add some grated cheese and chopped Italian parsley and serve hot. The rich pesto finds its way in to the holes of the pasta and this makes for a delicious pasta that is so incredibly easy to make.
6 Responses
Hello MM!
Have tons and I means TONS of tomatoes this year! Looking forward to making your oven roasted tomatoes from first harvest next month. Red pesto is something I always have on hand. I make mine with a few kalamata or those oil cured olives added and flavoured with basil and flat leaf parsley.
I add some small cubes of avocado when tossing the pasta with the red pesto and topped with crumbled feta or torn burrata. Yes, mga Mrs…MM is right! Please do try it!
It is tomato weather over here now, so the markets will be flooded with sun ripened tomatoes soon.
La Emp….Make a lot of MM ‘s oven roasted tomatoes and come winter, make red pesto pack in small jars, buy some pasta at Bosa, fresh mozzarella or burrata, pack in nice basket and give to Mrs. P as one of your Christmas presents to her! I know she likes making fast, quick, yummy, meals!
BettyQ, I think of you every time there’s a news flash of forest fires out West. I trust that you are not in anyway affected. But don’t those rare delicious wild mushrooms shoot out of the ashes left by fire?
Footloose and bettyq, OMG, how I dream of those dried personally picked mushrooms from our last trip to Vancouver… they made the BEST mushroom bread pudding EVER!
Footloose! You won’t believe how dry and HOT it is over here. It is true what you read on the news…brown is the new green as they say!
ON THE UPSIDE…FIRE MORELS NEXT YEAR IS WHAT I AM EXCITED ABOUT! Provided steady rains then a few days of sunshine start coming soon, all is not lost.
MM…once mushroom season gets underway, will dehydrate more this year and send them to you! If I send you frozen partially cooked chanterelles, you have to use them as soon as you get them. Even the pine mushrooms, I prefer to partially cook them now and freeze them. But I will still dehydrate yours if you prefer them that way.
Hello BettyQ!!!! Avocado in red pesto pasta…interesting….I love avocado….I will try that!
this is the kind of pasta sauce that leads to carbo-loading ;-) but since i have a huge jar of dried tomatoes in olive oil in the pantry….