How To Make Pesto Pasta Salad

I'm going to make a fresh pesto pasta salad using basil, basil pesto. We've got a whole packet of basil here and a little bit of parmesan cheese, which is 30 grams of parmesan. Five tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 30 grams of pine nuts, and a clove of garlic, and I've cooked some pasta already.

All the different kinds of pasta you can buy in the shops will tell you how long to cook them for so just follow the instructions on the packet and fresh pasta takes about half the amount of time to cook than dried pasta. But we've used dried pasta penne which is a quill shape of pasta. The pesto sauce is really simple to make.

You just need a food processor. This is a nice little food processor here. If you've got one with a massive great bowl in it, then you might need to use the smaller attachment inside.

But, the basil, you can use all of the basil. Don't bother taking stalks off because they've got lots of flavor as well. And you can just put those in.

If you buy basil, don't put it in the fridge because it goes black if sits in the fridge so just leave it off to the side. And then, we're going to use the pine nuts. If you've got a nut allergy, you can substitute the pine nuts with things like sunflower seeds providing you haven't got a seed allergy as well.

You could use blanched almonds as well instead of the pine nuts. With the garlic clove, just cut off either end of the garlic and put the knife on top and give it a good whack, and that should take the paper skin off the outside. And then if you just chop that up roughly using a rolling chopping technique, keep your fingertips out of the way so they don't get cut off by the knife.

Just cut those into slivers and then you can put that in to you pesto. And then just grate the parmesan cheese. You could use pepperina as well, or the cheaper version of parmesan is called ramadana.

It's about two thirds the cost of parmesan which is quite handy so you could use that instead. It tastes very similar. So, all the grated cheese can go in, and then start whizzing the paste together and we'll add the olive oil.

Use a spatula just to push it down into the bottom of the food processor again, and we'll give it another little whiz. You don't have to make it particularly smooth. You can leave it quite chunky if you want.

If you want to make a finer pesto so you can drizzle it over something, you can just add a little water or put a bit of oil in. Just don't whiz it in because the oil will thicken the pesto. You can let it down, just a little bit of drizzled in oil.

And then it's got this wonderful vibrant green color. And we're going to use that to coat the pasta. Now, as this is a pasta salad, we're actually going to serve it cold, but you could just stir the pesto sauce through warm pasta as well and that would be lovely, too.

This is enough for two people, so you just divide it between the two bowls. And if you've got a little bit of basil left, you could put that on top. And if you've got some parmesan and a vegetable peeler, just make a few shavings of parmesan to go on the top and that just makes it a little more finished.

That is how to make pesto pasta salad. .