Benefits

Pasta with Gaspacho Pesto and Olives

 

Quick to prepare healthy Mediterranean recipe. it’s incredibly delicious too.

Ingredients:

  • A pack of pasta
  • 4 tomatoes
  • 2 cucumbers
  • 100gr deboned olives
  • Extra virgin olive oil – 4 tablespoons.
  • basil
  • salt
  • onions
  • Ham – not mandatory

Preparation

Get a pot and pour a litre of water. Put the pot on the hob and wait until boiling.

Tip: Add salt to speed up the process.

 

While the water is heating up, you have at least 5 minutes to prepare the “Gaspacho like” pesto.

#1 Start with the tomatoes. You need them washed and peeled. If they are well ripe they’ll be hard to peel. You have two options in that case:

1. Boil water, dip the tomatoes in the water, remove them quickly and put them in ice. The skin will remove easy after that.

2. Use the peeler and start peeling from the bottom to the top of the tomato. The fibres of the tomato are placed this way and that eases the procedure.

peeled tomatoes

#2 Remove the seeds in order not to make the pesto too watery. Cut a small hole in the tomato and slice only the meaty part to the bottom. Carefully open the tomato and remove the seeds with a small but very sharp knife. Once you do that to all tomatoes, cut them in equally small cubes and throw them in the blender.

#3 Your cucumbers’ preparation is similar to the one of the tomatoes. Wash them well, peel them and cut them in half. Remove the seeds and cut the cucumbers to equally small pieces. These go in the blender too.

#4 Throw the olives, the basil and three spoons of olive oil in the blender. Add some salt and mix everything. You need homogeneous mix.

olivebasil

blender

#5 At that point your water should be already boiling. Peel the onions, cut them and add them to boil in the water. This will add a delicate taste to the food.

#6 Add the whole pack of pasta and stir. Good quality pasta do not glue to each other.

#7 Boil until the pasta is completely ready, take it off the hob, into the strainer and pour cold water on it. That cuts the boiling immediately and don’t allow it to squashy.

#8 Put the pasta back in the empty pot and pour an extra cup of cold water on it. Leave it that way for a minute or two.

My personal advice is to keep the pasta and the pesto separated and mix them in your dish.

Store the pasta and the pesto covered in the fridge.

Tips:

1. You can grate feta or white cheese on top of your dish, each time you eat.

2. If you wish you may add ham too. Slice it into pieces and add it before right before eating.

3.The dish should be served warm and the pesto should be cold.

ready pasta

I hope you’ll find that recipe interesting and delicious.