Pesto orecchiette pasta

Mothers Day Lunch

If brekkie in bed is not for your mother, she likes to get up, get out and do things, or she’s just not a brekkie kinda gal, then perhaps a nice lunch with a chilled glass of pinot grigio is her jam. We don’t know your cooking abilities, they will vary from household to household were sure, but we do know one thing when cooking for someone, especially someone you love like your mother, pasta is your friend and you should hold it close, it’s super easy to get a lot of flavour into, with not much effort, just like this basil pesto orecchiette Taylor made, there are not many things better than fresh pesto pasta, and with the quality of products in stores these days, you don’t even have to make your own pesto. Mixed with raw zucchini, sultanas and fresh ricotta, your mother will be in heaven, hopefully sitting in the sun with that chilled wine. If you are making your own pesto, like the pistachio and basil one used in this recipe, the trick is to bash the pistachio with the parmesan in a mortar and pestle, this releases the oils in the nuts, which in turn releases flavour, then add basil, bunch by bunch, accompanied with a little olive oil and salt. The motor and pestle break down the cell membrane of the leaf, bruising and bashing it into a pulp, making the perfect pesto, herbs are best crushed. You can use a blender, however, a blender cuts the herbs, which bruises them in the wrong way, causing them to discolour. The flavour, texture and colour will not be the same. A little pesto goes a long way. While we used orecchiette pasta, feel free to use whatever you like, it will all be the same in the end. In this recipe, we used shredded chicken. If a vegetarian dish is what you are looking for just leave it out.  To shred the chicken we boiled it in water until cooked, left to cool at room temperature and then shredded with the fingers, then we cooked the pasta in the ‘stock’ leftover from cooking the chicken breast, it’s all for flavour. The sultanas add a certain sweetness, zucchini adding a nice texture while pesto and chicken exploding with flavour, make sure to add a good squeeze of lemon juice, salt and pepper to the top, this recipe will take about 20 minutes to prepare, even quicker if not making the pesto, but if you have a mortar and pestle, we suggest you do, just like we said in the Mothers day brekkie in bed blog, Mothers love things to be homemade, you can even make your own ricotta if you like, it’s super simple and there are plenty of recipes out there, essentially its just milk and acid. If you can’t find ricotta you can use burrata or mozzarella for the same creamy effect, we hope your mother enjoys her beautiful pesto pasta lunch, we know ours will. Happy mothers day.