Jamie Oliver's Summertime Tagliarini

Tonight I made Jamie Oliver's "Summertime Tagliarini" but that's a bit of a mouthful so from now on I'm going to call this "Lemon Pesto".

This isn't the kind of recipe I would normally choose...in fact, I didn't, it was chosen by my man and he also bought all the ingredients...he even cooked the pasta and cleaned up so all I had to do was make the "pesto" and drink some red wine.

This is a quick and simple recipe which makes a refreshing change from tomato based pasta dishes.

It's not exactly a budget meal - pine nuts, fresh herbs, half a gallon of extra virgin olive oil and two tons of hard cheese are responsible for that.

The pine nuts, cheese and olive oil also mean it's not exactly skimping on the fat and calories either!

However, don't let this put you off...

I followed the recipe exactly as written... the only difference is that I used linguine instead of tagliatelle.

I served the pasta with steam asparagus and a glass of red wine, outside on a warm summer's night...wonderful!

I'd say the recipe yield is a bit off on this - it's supposed to serve 4... we don't eat big portions and this was only just enough for two adults and one child

Would I make this again? Yes but perhaps make it a little less lemony by using the zest of only one lemon instead of two and adjust the ingredients if there were four of us, as there would normally be.

I've left the recipe below as per Jamie Oliver's website.

Lemon Pesto & Pasta

Serves 4

Ingredients:

75 g pine nuts

juice and zest of 2 lemons

1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked, half finely chopped and half left whole

135 ml extra virgin olive oil

95 g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, plus extra for shaving

30 g pecorino cheese, freshly grated

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

320 g good-quality tagliarini or tagliatelle or linguine ;-)

Method:

Grind half the pine nuts to a paste (I used my pestle & mortar which was a little bit too small for the job really).

Get a large heat proof bowl, one that will fit on top of your pasta pan because basically, as you are boiling the water, you are going to use the cooking pasta pan as a kind of bain marie for the pesto (I don't have a bowl large enough so I used the smaller bowl I own and placed it on top of the pan that my asparagus were steaming in).

Into the bowl, put the pine nut paste, whole pine nuts, lemon zest, lemon juice, cheese, finely chopped parsley & olive oil...stir and season with pepper.

When the water starts to boil, remove the bowl and add your pasta to the water. Cook it according to the packet instructions then drain in a colander, reserving a little of the cooking water.

Toss the pasta with the sauce and a little of the reserved cooking water to help loosen it up a bit.

Serve with a little extra Parmesan shaved over the top and a sprinkle of parsley leaves.

Eat immediately.