This week I am sharing with you an easy-peasy broccoli recipe and I hope you and your family will like it! It is broccoli, yep-not much loved by children I know, but it will be made into a pesto (yes, so they won’t recognise it!) with nuts and Parmesan cheese, so it is delicious and packed full with nutrition! No harm at all to try, right?
I adapted this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, though I made a couple of changes as I used whatever I had in hand: for example I didn’t have enough walnuts so I used a mixture of roasted walnuts and pine nuts instead. I used only half a clove of garlic, as I personally don’t like the pesto too ‘garlicky’. I used Linguine instead of pasta shape. But feel free to experiment, and to find ‘The’ recipe that you really like! But don’t skip the olives, it really gives the dish an extra flavour!
Ingredients:
(serves 4)
- 1 Medium head broccoli, washed and cut into small florets (I kept the larger stem for a stir fry later!)
- ¼ cup roasted walnuts
- ¼ cup roasted pine nuts
- 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 1/3 Extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
- ½ clove of garlic, mashed
- Sea salt, to taste
- 350g Linguine
- A Handful of black olives, pitted
Fry the broccoli with a little bit of olive oil and salt in a non-stick pan over medium heat, then add ½ cup of water in the pan and covered with a lid, let the broccoli cook/steam in the pan for about a minute (do not over cook it!), remove from heat, drain in a colander and run it under cold water. Drain again and reserve a few florets for serving.
In the food processor, add the broccoli, nuts, Parmesan, lemon juice, salt and garlic. Whiz until you get a paste and gradually drizzle in olive oil while the machine is still running. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice if needed, transfer the pesto into a glass jar and set aside.
Cook the linguine according to package instruction. Divide the linguine on to some warmed plates and add a heaped tablespoon of pesto (or to your liking) on each plate of noodles. Mix well and throw in a few olives to each plate and sprinkle some more Parmesan if desired. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil to the finished dish before serving.
ginger & chorizo 