Pine Nut Worship Pasta

This is a slightly more complex bit of cooking than last time, but it takes almost no skills cooking-wise and it is somewhat derived from a great recipe by Dave Lieberman, who is scandalously not available at my local library (I am going to see if I can change that). His has grape/cherry tomatoes sliced in half in place of peas, mine is more about pine nut worship (pine nuts being a main ingredient of pesto in the first place), thus the name.

Pine Nut Worship Pasta

Get some bowtie aka farfalle pasta and cook it; while doing so, get some pesto and put a good spoonful or so in a mixing bowl. While the pasta cooks (farfalle takes a little while) get some pine nuts* - a handful will do - and set them aside. Get the feta cheese out and either crumble it up a little or have it cubed up already (either by yourself or ready-made) at hand. When the pasta is almost done, cook your peas (again, a goodly handful here - more than the pine nuts) in whatever way you choose - I do it in the microwave.

When the pasta is done, drain it, make sure it is dry and then put it in the mixing bowl and start adding all the ingredients, making sure the pesto coats all the farfalle and the feta, peas and pine nuts are mixed in evenly. Serve immediately with grated parmesan on top.

*If you want something to do while waiting for the water to boil, toasting the nuts is a great idea. Just make sure they don't burn!

(If you wanted to make this more carnivore-friendly, which I understand, you could substitute the feta for pancetta or bacon.)

Crouton Bread

It has occurred to me that I don't post here nearly enough, and that I have yet to write down one single solitary recipe as well, so here goes: what I call Crouton Bread and what you may call whatever you like. It's as easy as cooking gets, if you consider toasting bread cooking, and I do:

Crouton Bread

Get a good piece of bread - something reasonably substantial, a French or Italian bread works best. Toast it well. Put some olive oil on it (about a tablespoon I figure, and if it's extra virgin olive oil, all the better) and then sprinkle with some salt, any salt. Eat immediately and repeat if you wish, though I made this as I didn't want to peel yet another clove of garlic as I was a bit tired after making the meal in the first place (this happy accident coming while I was recuperating).

The olive oil can and will run through the bread on to whatever is beneath it, so you may as well do it right there above your plate, esp. if you are eating pasta with salad, or something else olive-oil friendly...

The greatness of this recipe is that it takes three rock-solid classics and bluntly puts them together - the better the bread and oil are of course the better it will be, but it is up to you to choose them, and if you wanted to put some pepper on here that would be fine too.

(N.B. As you can see I am putting a blogroll together; if there are any food blogs you think I should add, please let me know. Thanks!)