Almond and sage pesto
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I got inspired by some almonds and sardines and decided to try a new version of pesto by adding some sage. I served this impressive sauce with al dente rigatoni, which was the right choice for this dense flavour.
To balance the meal, I quickly made a fresh and crunchy salad using some cabbage turnip, radicchio rosso as well as the first castelfranco of the season.
This dish is suitable for a quick weeknight dinner, when your fridge is lacking fresh vegetables and you want to impress with a good plate of pasta in 30 minutes.
Almond and sage pesto
Not your usual, but flavour intensive pesto
Servings 2 servings
Ingredients
- 60 g almonds
- 2 hands of sage leaves
- 2 slices organic lemon with the zest
- 2 sardines I had ones in olive oil, which I then also used for the pesto
- 2 garlic cloves
- good pinch of salt
- good olive oil
- ricotta salata grated
- 160 pasta I used rigatoni, which were very good with this sauce
Instructions
- Grind the almonds with your food processor until they are very fine. Scoop them out into a medium sized bowl.
- In the same container of your food processor add the sage leaves, the garlic cloves (half them if they are very large), the sardines as well as the lemon slices. Process all together and add into your bowl with the almonds.
- Season with a generous pinch of salt and olive oil - just enough to ensure that your almond mixture is moist.
- Cook your pasta al dente and add 3 - 4 scoops of pasta water to your almond pesto. Mix all together. You should have a rather liquid but flavour intense pesto.
- Once al dente, drain your pasta and immediately pour it back into your pan. Add a generous scoop of the pesto and ensure that you mix thorougly before dividing the pasta into portions. Serve with a generous amount of the pesto on top as well as a good portion of grated ricotta salata.
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