Saturday, January 10, 2009

Back from the Break with Pesto Pasta with Sausage

Recipe name: Pesto Pasta with Sausage
Source: Pennies and Pounds
Servings: 4
Cookbook date: January 7

1 pound pasta
2 tablespoons almonds (approximately)
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch cilantro
salt and pepper
1/4 c. olive oil
Reserved pasta cooking water
1/4 c. grated pecorino romano
1 pound turkey smoked sausage or kielbasa

Tim here once again. We took a little hiatus over the holiday break and now we are back in full force, well back posting at least. As always we made a few modifications to the recipe. We used dried cilantro and Parmesan cheese rather than Ramano.

Cooking the dish was pretty straight forward. First you start a large pot of water on the stove top to boil. Cook the pasta until it's al dente or still a bit chewy. The great thing about this recipe is that you can prepare the pesto while the water is working up to a boil.

To make the pesto you combine the almonds, garlic, cilantro and salt and pepper in a food processor. Once everything is chopped up you can drizzle in the olive oil. About now the water should be ready for the pasta. Once you put in the pasta to cook you can start on the sausage.

I cooked the sausage on a large skillet on medium heat until it was browned. Before you strain the pasta sauce make sure you reserve a cup of the water. Use this water for the pesto sauce in the food processor and process until you get to a smoother consistency. Now all you have to do is put it all together. I decided to to toss the pasta, pesto, Parmesan cheese and sausage in the pot I cooked the pasta in to reduce the number of dishes. If it still seems to dry you can add in some of the left over pasta water.

While we both enjoyed this dish but we felt that the pesto sauce was lacking. If we had to do it over we would make sure we used a fresh bunch of cilantro and made the pesto a little more saucy.

1 comment:

msrevolution said...

yay! glad you're back!