Trust me on this..you will love this recipe (esp. if you are growing Sungold cherry tomatoes!)
This is a recipe for a rather unusual cherry tomato pesto (!!) that is quite remarkable.....partly because it takes essentially no time to make, but tastes like something you would swoon over in an expensive restaurant!
Ingredients:
1 lb cherry tomatoes (preferably Sungold, or something similarly delicious - Black Cherry, Galina, maybe Sweet Million)
1/3 cup toasted almonds
20 leaves fresh basil
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1/4 or more tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 cup olive oil
a few grinds of black pepper
another half pound or so of small cherry tomatoes of your choice (but make sure they are good tasting!)
Combine everything except the olive oil in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal chopping blade. Pulse a few times, scrape the sides, and blend for a minute or so.
open the top chute and add the olive oil in a thin stream with the processor running - it will make a loose paste whose color is not all that appetizing....but just wait!
Cook 1 lb of pasta of your choice - we used a regular bore spaghetti, cooked al dente.
In a large bowl, add half of the cherry tomato pesto and half of the extra cherry tomatoes. Add the drained, hot pasta - then top with the rest of the pesto and cherry tomatoes - mix well.
Serve topped with a generous sprinkling of grated Parmesan Reggiano and ground black pepper.
we had this with just simple steamed zucchini topped with extra parmesan.
Warning....the flavor is addictive, hard to describe - savory, rich, complex!
If you try it, let me know what you think!
It is a recipe we saw on Lydia's Italy cooking show on PBS - we modified it just a bit.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm going to try it on zucchini "pasta".
and it really was wonderful! I have quite a bit of tomatoes growing right now, so used those instead of the cherry tomatoes. I lightly coated them in olive oil and roasted them first, then added it to the processor with the remaining ingredients. It really was lovely! Thanks for sharing
