Pasta pesto must be the ultimate fall-back dish for when you want something incredibly tasty, with little effort.
I’ve found myself going on a lot more nature walks than normal in recent days and have stumbled across some wild garlic, so it is pasta pesto season again in my house.
I got some incredible orecchiette from Sheridan’s cheesemonger, but any type of dried or fresh pasta will be perfect for this dish.
Kevin Burke is a chef at Allta wine bar in Dublin 2.
WILD GARLIC ORECCHIETTE, GREMOLATA AND CRÈME FRAICHE
Serves four
Ingredients
250g orecchiette
1 tbsp crème fraiche
Parmesan
Lots of wild garlic leaves
Wild garlic pesto:
100g wild garlic
30g toasted hazelnuts
20g fresh basil
10g Parmesan
100g olive oil
Gremolata:
10g toasted hazelnuts
10g chopped parsley
½ a lemon, zest of
10g olive oil
Method
1. Put a large pan of water on to the boil, and add enough salt until the water tastes like the sea.
2. Add all the ingredients for the pesto into a blender and blitz until smooth.
3. Drop the pasta into the boiling water and stir to stop it sticking. Cook for eight minutes, or as recommended on the packet.
4. While the pasta is cooking, roughly chop the hazelnuts and parsley for the gremolata. Add the lemon zest, olive oil, and a pinch of salt and set this aside.
5. When the pasta is cooked, keep a little of the cooking water, but drain the rest.
6. Fold a couple of spoons of the pesto into the pasta, with a little of the cooking water, to create a luxurious green sauce, and gently heat it through.
7. Serve in bowls or on plates and finish each with the gremolata, wild garlic leaves, grated Parmesan and a generous spoon of crème fraiche.
Kitchen Cabinet is a series of recipes from chefs who are members of Euro-Toques Ireland who have come together during the coronavirus outbreak to share some of the easy, tasty things that they like to cook and eat at home #ChefsAtHome
