Pasta with pea shoot and baby leaf pesto and sundried tomatoes

The weather in England today is so nicely warm and sunny. People in the Nordic countries are celebrating Midsummer in not so warm conditions, but I wish you all a nice Midsummer nevertheless.

Pasta with pesto is pretty much perfect summer food for me. Throw a tomato and mozzarella salad on the side and it can be close to heaven. Pesto is so incredible as it can be made from so many different summer greens, and this time I chose to use pea shoots and baby leaves. I added some sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, hazelnuts and vegetarian pasta cheese to the dish and here's my recipe.

Pea shoot and baby leaf pesto:

90 g mixed baby leaves and pea shoots

1 garlic clove

4-6 tbsp olive oil

10 g pine nuts

Other ingredients:

10 sundried tomatoes

1 tsp olive oil

Fresh basil

Handful of hazelnuts

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Amori pasta

Method:

First make the pea shoot and baby leaf pesto by puréeing all the ingredients together. Then the pesto can wait in the fridge for the rest to be made.

Cut the sundried tomatoes into smaller pieces and soak them in water for about 10 minutes.

Cut the hazelnuts in halves and roast them in the oven until the flavour are released.

Briefly cook the sundried tomatoes in olive oil in a pan and add the basil and hazelnuts.

Make shavings from the vegetarian pasta cheese.

Cook the pasta until it's al dente and then mix it with the tomatoes, nuts and pesto. 

This is how my summerly pesto pasta dish is done and I want to share it with two cooking challenges. Firstly due to its greenness, I'm sharing this recipe with this month's Eat Your Greens challenge by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. 

I also want to add this to this month's Pasta Please challenge, which is a cooking challenge by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes and hosted this month by BakingQueen74.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog