I Love, Love, Love homemaking pasta. In fact handmade pasta is one of those thing I love teaching to my students the most. It’s just so fun and so rewarding.
I have already made pasta with beetroot before (see my post for Homemade Beetroot Fettuccine with Peas and Feta ). Today I have shaped it like linguine and dressed it with bacon and a SUPER pesto made with pistachios. Not really a “light” meal, but totally worth its sin.
Here is the step by step recipe. Enjoy and happy Halloween to everyone!
Ingredients (serves 4):
For the dough
- 300 g semolina flour
- 2 beetroot, boiled
- 3 eggs
For the pesto
- 200 g pistachio
- 60 ml Extra-virgin olive oil
- Ground black pepper
- Salt
- 40 g Pine nuts
- 2 tbsp. Grated Parmesan cheese
- 4 leaves of fresh basil
- 150 g smoked bacon
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp crushed pistachio
- 8 fresh basil leaves
- 4 tsp. grated Parmesan cheese
For making the pasta
In a blender or food processor pure’ the beetroots, set aside.
Make a mound with the flour on your work surface and scoop out a well in the middle. Pour the eggs into the hole and with a fork slowly beat the eggs into the flour, add the beet root pure and using your hands knead the dough for about 10-15 min. until it gets smooth, firm and quite elastic. Cover It up in wrapping paper and let it rest for about 30 min.
Roll out the dough into a 5 mm thick circle and using a sharp knife, cut off 3 mm thick strips. Make sure your working surface is well floured so the dough will not stick on it.
If you need step by step pictures, go check out my post for Homemade Beetroot Fettuccine with Peas and Feta
For making the pesto
Combine all the ingredients (pistachios, extra-virgin olive oil, ground black pepper, salt, pine nuts, grated parmesan cheese and basil) into your blender
and puree’ them until you get a smooth paste. Set aside.
Cut the bacon in small bites, and sauté’ it in a skillet until it gets nice and crispy
Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the pasta, 1 tbsp. of salt and 1 tbsp. of oil and cook for about 10 min, or until pasta is cooked. Drain it off the cooking water, put it in a bowl, add the bacon and pistachio pesto and stir until the linguine are all well dressed with the pesto.
Decorate with crushed pistachio and some fresh leaves of basil and serve.
Love
– LittleDani
