Farfalle with pistachio pesto
Green pesto used to only ever mean pesto genovese to me (the basil and pine nut version). Pistachio pesto has become more of a thing in Italy in recent years and deservedly so. It is another shade of green – a little more exotic – and better suited to egg pastas or seafood. At Bocca di Lupo, we make our farfalle by hand from a rich egg dough. It is quite a fun exercise and not challenging, but if you buy them, go for the thinnest ones that you can find, made with the sunniest yellow dough. For the pistachios, blanched Iranian ones (a deep vivid green) are best here.
To drink: Punset 2020 Langhe Arneis offers fresh and juicy citrus and nectarine flavours to balance the rich, creamy, basilscented sauce (£20.88; armitwines.co.uk).
Yield
Serves 4
Ingredients
For the pesto
For the pasta
Variations
Method
Step 1
To make the pesto, blend the ingredients together to a fine-textured paste.
Step 2
Boil the pasta in well-salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, you can warm the pesto in a bowl over the cooking pasta.
Step 3
Toss the pasta and the pesto together, with a little of the pasta cooking water, and serve straight away, sprinkled with pistachios. Or, if you want to make it a more substantial meal, see ‘Variations’, below.
Variations
Step 4
To add courgettes, heat the olive oil in a pan, then sauté the courgettes over a high heat briefly while the pasta is cooking. Toss with the pasta and pesto, and a little of the cooking water, and serve. For prawns or mussels, add them to a pan with the oil (or add them to the already cooked and no longer sizzling courgettes) and warm over a low heat while the pasta is cooking, until just heated through. (If cooking prawns from raw, they should be just barely cooked.) Toss with the pasta and pesto and a little of the pasta water, then serve immediately.
