Recipe: Lemon Pepper Linguine with Pea Pesto

When The Rocket Scientist left I inherited his pasta maker (along with a down quilt and a glass jellyfish, but those aren’t edible) and I plan on making good and delicious use of it. First up: Lemon Pepper Linguine with Pea Pesto.

Fresh Lemon Pepper Pasta

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tbs salt
• 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 tbs warm water
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• 3 tbs lemon zest
• cracked pepper (I like a lot)

Directions:

• Mix the whole wheat flour, flour, pepper and salt in a large bowl or flat surface
• Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the eggs, water, oil, lemon juice and lemon zest into the well
• Slowly incorporate the dry and wet ingredients together until a dough forms
• Put the dough through a pasta maker or roll flat and cut into strips
• Drop into boiling water and cook for 5-ish minutes
• Save some of the pasta water!

Notes:

• No worries if you don’t incorporate all the dry ingredients into the pasta dough, or if you need to add more flour. Variables such as egg size, flour consistency, and altitude make every batch of dough a little different
• I prefer to keep the noodles on the thick side for this pasta. It holds the lemon zest and peppercorns better, and since whole wheat doughs tend to be both sticky and crumbly at the same time, a thicker noodle stays together

Pea Pesto

This recipe evolved as a way to empty out my freezer (peas and walnuts), and was much more successful than previous emptying attempts (you’d think carrot and raspberry sherbet muffins would work…)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of peas (fresh or frozen)
• 2 cloves of garlic (3 if the cloves are small, 1 if you’re a wuss)
• Big handful of basil and parsley
• 3/4 cup of walnuts
• 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
• Lemon juice to taste
• Olive oil to texture
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions:

• Lightly boil peas – no more than 2 minutes – and then shock them in ice water to stop the cooking
• Add peas, garlic, walnuts, basil, parsley, Parmesan, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to a food processor and blend away!
• If the sauce is too thick, toss the sauce and pasta with some of the reserved pasta water

Notes:

• The sweetness of the peas provides a fantastic balance to the sharpness of the garlic, lemon and Parmesan cheese
• The textures in the pesto – peas, walnuts, garlic and cheese – work well if you leave the sauce chunky. But it’s also delicious blended smoothly

I LOVE pesto and have tried almost every variation there is, and this may be one of my favorites.

This pesto is also amazing as a dip for crackers, fresh veggies, Girl Scout cookies, whatever.

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