Do you sometimes find yourself at home and wondering what to have for lunch?  It’s something I’m having to deal with daily now that I am unable to work and so pretending to be a domestic goddess.

I don’t like eating too much at lunch time, particularly if I’m on my own, so often fall back on a simple pasta dish that was one of my brother’s university standbys.  This is hardly a recipe, more of a gathering of ingredients, but it does very well when you’re in a hurry.

Pasta With Pesto

Allow roughly 100g of dried pasta per person.  For this I prefer long pasta such as linguini, but it works well with fusilli, penne, or any shape that picks up sauce quite well.  Place a large pan of water on to boil, and in true Mediterranean style add plenty of salt.  Cook the pasta until al dente, then reserve a ladle of the starchy cooking water before draining the pasta.

Meanwhile in a frying pan fry some good quality bacon or pancetta until starting to colour, then add some finely chopped red onion, mushrooms and peppers.

Once the pasta is drained, and don’t be too particular about getting it really dry, return it to the pan over a low heat and add in the fried ingredients along with any pan juices.  Finally, add around one teaspoon of good quality pesto per person to the pan and stir it through; at this stage you can use some of the reserved pasta water to loosen it and turn it into more of a sauce.  I usually check to see if it needs any freshly ground pepper; if you’ve used bacon you probably won’t need to add any salt.  Serve immediately either on its own or with some fresh crusty bread or a salad.

Of course, if you are vegetarian leave out the bacon, and in it’s place I would make sure I had plenty of good flavoursome mushrooms.  I hope you enjoy sharing lunch with me 🙂

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