Category: pesto

Categories
leeks parmesan pasta pesto pine nuts ricotta spring onion

green pesto penne

If you don’t follow Gennaro Contaldo on Instagram, you’re missing out. He posts great food all the time. When he posted a picture of a lunch time special, I had to make it. He didn’t really describe a recipe so here’s my recipe for a green pesto penne inspired by Gennaro Contaldo.

JI Canary Wharf Docklands Another special of the day, our own freshly homemade mezzemaniche pasta with zucchini, mint, spring onion and pecorino pesto, topped up with buffalo baked ricotta and grated pecorino #zuchinni #pesto #buffalo #ricotta #courgette #jamiesitalian

A post shared by Gennaro Contaldo (@gennarocontaldo) on

Since employing Jamie Oliver in the Neal Street restaurant in the 1990s, the two have always had a close relationship. Gennaro looks on him like a son, and Jamie gives him credit for properly teaching him Italian cuisine. Hence, Gennaro has a mentor / ambassadorial role at Jamie’s Italian, roaming their branches spreading his love and knowledge of Italian food. What joy he must bring to their kitchens, with his infectious attitude and heavily accented English. I love him when he’s on TV, and he was just as genial when I met him in 2016.

Pesto is a great catch-all recipe and this spring pesto penne recipe is a good store cupboard standby. This recipe brings together great produce and turns it into a veg-packed sauce that glows with goodness. You could easily substitute the mint for another leafy one, or swap whatever greens you have on hand. Just blanch as needed to tenderise or quieten harsh flavours. Don’t skip the ricotta, the nutty creaminesss is a perfect foil to the herby flavours.

Apart from baking the ricotta, the whole thing can be done in under 15 minutes so is a great weekday dinner.

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green pesto penne

Course Main Dish
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Servings 4 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 250 g ricotta
  • dried oregano
  • 1 lemon
  • 3 spring onions
  • 1 courgette topped and tailed
  • 1 small leek
  • 250g penne
  • 1 mint large bunch
  • 25 g pine nuts
  • 20 g parmesan freshly grated

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Put the ricotta on this, drizzle with olive oil, grate over the zest of half a lemon, sprinkle with salt and a pinch of oregano. Bake for 30 mins or until tinged brown at the edges.
  • Get a large pan of salted water on to boil. When boiling furiously, add the spring onions, courgette and leek and blanch for two minutes to take the harsh notes out of the onion and start tendering the veg. Don't discard the water, now use it to cook your pasta.
  • While the pasta cooks, add the veg, mint, pine nuts, a swig of extra virgin olive oil and a large pinch of salt to a food processor and blitz to pieces. When everything is broken down, trickle in some more oil to make a paste. Stop the motor and grate in plenty of parmesan, lemon juice and a big splash of the pasta cooking water. Taste and add more salt, lemon or oil as required until you have a loose sauce.
  • When the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the pan. Toss the sauce with the pasta until well-coated. Serve in bowls, garnishing with rough chunks of baked ricotta, pine nuts and parmesan.
Categories
bread food olives pesto salami

pesto, salami and black olive tear and share bread

Somewhat inspired by recent challenges on Great British Bake Off, I thought about making some tear and share bread. When left to my own devices things often take a Mediterranean direction. I’d not tried tear and share (or pull-apart to my American friends) before so started with a basic bread recipe and moved out from there.

I was off round a friend’s so though about taking some nice savoury bread with me. (As it turned out he cancelled so poor old me, I had to eat the whole thing myself.)

I started with a standard yeast dough, no surprises here.

Left to rise until doubled…

Folded in my deli ingredients and shaped. I made the swirls first (just a sausage shape wrapped around itself – I’ve been making my daughter’s hair into a bun lately so it kinda reminded me of shaping that). The leftover dough was left as a round roll in the centre.

And whaddya know, it turned out great.

I’ll definitely be making variations on this tear and share recipe again. PS. I was making mine ready for about 8 people so made a fairly large one (about 30 cm across!), so do scale up / down your ingredients as required.

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pesto, salami and black olive tear and share bread

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 750 g bread flour
  • 2 x 7 g sachets yeast
  • 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
  • 5 slices salami diced
  • 12 black olives halved
  • 100 g green pesto I like Sacla'

Instructions

  • In x warm water add the yeast and sugar, whisk lightly to combine and leave while you get the dried stuff ready.
  • Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Make a well and add half the yeasty water. Combine well then keep adding water until everything in the bowl comes together. Turn out on a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes into a smooth, pliable dough. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise for about 45 minutes.
  • After this time, knock it back and incorporate the herbs, salami and olives. Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Take one piece and roll it into a sausage shape. Spread this on one side with some of the pesto (like toast), then twist the dough into a spiral shape. Repeat for 4 more of the pieces, and leave the sixth as a smooth ball. Arrange on your baking tray and leave to prove for an hour.
  • Preheat the oven to 180C. Bake for 25 - 35 minutes, until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Because the bread is an irregular shape, you should check all over the bread, and it's probably a good idea to rotate the loaf 180 degrees mid-bake to keep it even.

Want more bread recipes?

Try my tiger bread

Or for a special occasion, Heston-inspired mushroom parfait and walnut bread

My Custard Pie’s courgette loaf looks like a right treat

Something sweeter? Try Utterlyscrummy’s cinnamon pull-apart bread

Perhaps a more recognisable deli-topped bread? Check out Greedy Gourmet’s artichoke and sun-dried tomato pizza

Categories
food pesto pizza tomato

slow-roast tomato and pesto pizza

One of my favourite things about food blogging is finding new people who have other ideas that inspire you. I happened upon Bangers & Mash, and wouldn’t you know it – it revolves around family food which is a constant topic of mine. Via a link on the Brabantia Life website I found her recipe for slow-roast tomato pizza. I’ve made pizzas a whole bunch of times, so it was the slow-roast tomatoes that had me interested.

Gotta leave yourself a whole bunch of time to get these tomatoes roasted, and I’ve added a few more stages in here to make tomato sauce, pizza base and pesto, but using shop-bought substitutes for these would work great.

Thanks for the inspiration Vanesther!

Slow-roast tomato and pesto pizza (serves 2 with a side salad):

6 tomatoes

A ball of mozzarella

For the base:

325g plain flour

7g salt

½ teaspoon sugar

7g sachet yeast

About 250ml tepid water

4 tablespoons olive oil

For the tomato sauce:

½ tin tomatoes

1 clove garlic

Balsamic vinegar

For the pesto:

Bunch of basil, leaves and stalks

75g pine nuts

50g parmesan

Zest of ½ a lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

  1. Turn the oven to 100°C. Pop the tomatoes on a baking tray, drizzle with a little oil and roast for about 6 – 7 hours, until shrivelled and glistening.
  2. While they bake, stir together the dry dough ingredients, then gradually add water until it comes together to a stretchy dough. Knead for a further 10 minutes, drizzle with oil and cover. Leave for an hour to rise.
  3. After an hour, punch it back and then spread out into a thin round. Get the oven on as hot as it will go. If you have a pizza stone, put this in too to heat up.
  4. In a small frying pan, add a splash of oil and the garlic. After 10 seconds add the tomatoes and put on as high as it will go. Sprinkle with vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper and allow to reduce until getting thick (about 4 – 7 mins). Push through a sieve into a bowl and allow to cool slightly.
  5. In a pestle and mortar bash up all the pesto ingredients until you have a thick paste.
  6. Transfer your dough to the pizza stone, smear over the tomato sauce, dot with pesto and torn-up mozzarella. Arrange the tomatoes on the top and bake for about 8 – 10 mins, or until puffy and crisp. Eat immediately!
Categories
basil parmesan pesto pine nuts pizza

pesto pizza

I was set a challenge by Domino’s to come up with a home-made alternative to the newest addition to their online pizza menu – the Double Decadence Basil Burst. Their creation is a crazy double-decker affair of pesto-style sauce sandwich between two bases, then tomato sauce on top with the usual toppings. Layers and layers of complexity. Bonkers.

My response is to go the other way and pull it right back as simple as possible: a lovely chewy, crusty pizza base and a punchy pesto straight from the food processor. By mixing polenta in with the flour you get a pleasing honeyed colour to the dough and a sweet flavour too. The pesto is made in seconds and of course can be pushed in any direction you fancy on a given night.

It’s hearty and tasty, and pretty cheap too. Try it out!

Pesto pizza:

For the base (enough for 2 x 30cm pizzas – dough freezes well after first proving):

500g strong bread flour

100g fine polenta

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

7g dry yeast

4 tablespoons olive oil

300ml lukewarm water

For the pesto:

Bunch of basil, leaves and stalks

75g pine nuts

50g parmesan

Zest of ½ a lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

  1. In a jug mix the yeast, oil, water and sugar together and leave for a few minutes while you get on with the other dry ingredients.
  2. For the pizza base, bring the flour, polenta and salt together in a bowl. I use a food mixer which makes the next stage dead easy.
  3. Pour the wet mix into the dry and let a dough hook do its work for about 5-6 minutes. If you’re doing it by hand push and knead it together until smooth and elastic. Cover the dough with a damp teatowel and leave somewhere warm for an hour – it should double in size.
  4. When the dough has risen, pre-heat the oven as high as it will go. If you have a pizza stone, get it in now. Otherwise a cheap but conductive metal tray will work.
  5. Push the dough into a thin, round shape on a floured surface. Go as thin as you can. When it’s ready take it to the oven – you may want to drape this over a rolling pin to help transfer it. The pizza will bake for anywhere between 8 – 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of your base and the temperature of your oven. (Quicker is better).
  6. While the dough cooks, make the pesto. I do mine in a food processor, but a pestle and mortar works great. Chuck the basil in first and whizz up, then throw in the pine nuts. Add the cheese and keep on blending. When you have a lovely rubbly paste, scoop into a bowl and add enough olive oil to make it a smooth slush. Stir in the lemon zest and check for seasoning – add salt and pepper til it takes awesome.
  7. When your pizza base is ready, spread the pesto over and leave for 1 minute to let the sauce warm slightly and soak into the dough. Grate over a touch more fresh parmesan and serve.
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