Pesto Pasta, one of my easiest go to meals for the kids, especially if I load it up with some green veggies too. Like anything, there really is nothing like homemade, and like most of my recipes, there is nothing like mixing it up a little bit with some fresh Cypriot flavours; or course, the basil, pine nuts and olive oil inevitably remain, but with the addition of pistachios (also used in some pesto recipes), fresh mint, lemon zest and hellim (in place of the traditional Parmesan), we have ourselves a Meliz Cooks style pesto pasta in the house 🙌🏼🍋🌿🌱🥜 can’t tell you how much of a hit this is at home.
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Recipe:
25g pine nuts
25g pistachios
60g hellim (halloumi), finely grated
25g basil leaves
25g fresh mint leaves
120ml olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely grated (1 level tsp)
Pinch of sea salt flakes
Pinch of coarse black pepper
Zest of 1 lemon
Method:
Wash the basil and mint leaves, pat them as dry as possible, and let them dry out on paper towels for a few minutes.
Pop all the leaves in a food processor, along with the pine nuts and pistachios and blitz finely. Scrape down the sides of the food processor bowl and blitz again if necessary. Add the finely grated hellim and finely grated garlic and blitz again.
Very slowly pour in the olive oil, a little at a time, so that it starts to emulsify with the rest of the ingredients. Stop half way through, add the lemon zest, salt and pepper, then blitz again and keep adding the olive oil very slowly until it is all finished, occasionally stopping to carefully scrape down the sides of the food processor as you go along.
Now, how you serve it is down to preference – as a general rule of thumb, I serve 1 heaped tbsp of pesto with every 175g of cooked pasta (roughly 75g uncooked). As a suggestion, serve with steamed broccoli, black olives and finely grated hellim.
Store it in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze in small portions and defrost fully before serving.
