Linguine pasta with pesto sauce

Linguine pasta is an Italian staple in many dishes and one with pesto sauce is maybe one of the most classical ones out there.

Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 10 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients for Linguine: 

• 320 g linguine
• ½ clove garlic 
• 1 pinch coarse salt
• 100 g extra virgin olive oil 
• 50 g basil
• 30 g pecorino (to be grated) 
• 15 g pine nuts 
• 70 g parmigiano Reggiano (to be grated) 

Instructions:

Start with the pesto sauce; to prepare the pesto, cut the basil leaves from the stem and do not be washed under running water, but clean with a soft cloth or place in a bowl of cold water and rinse gently. 

Peel the garlic and place the mortar together with a few grains of coarse salt. Start pounding and, when the garlic is reduced to a cream add the basil leaves together with a pinch of coarse salt. 

Then crush the basil against the walls of the mortar, rotating the pestle from left to right and at the same time rotate the mortar in the opposite direction (from right to left) and continue like this until a bright green liquid comes out of the basil leaves.

At this point add the pine nuts, and start pounding again to reduce to cream. Add the cheeses a little at a time, which will make the sauce even more cream.

Lastly add the extra virgin olive oil which will be poured slowly, stirring constantly with the pestle.

Mix the ingredients well until you get a homogeneous sauce. Put a saucepan with plenty of salted water on the heat and, when the water has just touched the boiling point, cook the pasta. Now put the pesto in a large pan (with the heat off ) and dilute it with a little pasta cooking water.

Mix with a spatula and, as soon as the pasta is ready, add it directly to the pesto.

Mix everything to flavour, finally serve garnished with a few basil leaves

Tips:

In the absence of the mortar, you can use the blender (if possible, with plastic blades).