Pesto Trapanese Busiate Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves: 4
Ingredients Needed
300g/10.6ozs ripe cherry tomatoes - 100g/3.5ozs skinned almonds - 1 clove garlic - A good handful of basil leaves, around 20g/0.7ozs - 1 heaped tablespoon/20g/0.7ozs of grated pecorino - 2 tablespoons of olive oil - Salt and black pepper to taste - 500g/1.1lbs dried busiate pasta
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 ALMONDS - To roast almonds, spread out in a single layer on a tray and roast at 180C/350F conventional for 8-9 minutes or until nutty smelling (6-7 minutes for slivered almonds). Allow to cool.
Step 2 CRUSH - Crush almonds, tomatoes and garlic separately, either in a food processor or in a mortar and pestle. Then add the basil, pecorino and olive oil and blend or crush to form a paste. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. This sauce needs quite a bit of salt.
Step 3 PASTA - Cook the busiate pasta in a large pot of salted water until al dente or to your liking. Drain and mix with the pesto. Serve with extra pecorino, seasoned breadcrumbs or fried eggplant strips.
Personal Note
Eating is one of my favourite things in the world as you can probably tell but I also balance it with exercise and one thing that I find really helps is doing a lot of steps. That's why we bought a new walking pad and I find if I get around 8,000 - 9,000 steps a day, that's about enough for me. If I get over 10,000 it starts to hurt my knees (originally aggravated by wearing high heels for so many years).
When Laura and I went on a recent staycation it was rainy and miserable for the first day. She and I are both into counting our steps (she aims for 15,000 a day!) and usually we go for a nice walk somewhere but the rain stymied those plans.
"Why don't we walk around the shopping centre?" I suggested. I barely notice that I am walking when I am shopping and that way we'd be out of the rain. We spent hours walking around the shopping centre trying on things and I even nabbed some bargains. And by the time we walked back we had done around 13,000 steps plus gained a dress, some underwear and some popcorn too!
So tell me Dear Reader, are you as obsessed with steps as I am? How many do you try to do a day? Have you ever tried Pesto alla Trapanese?