Fallen Souffle

I was in Virginia again this weekend for the wedding of a childhood friend of mine and Mom and I always talk about what we plan to make for the week ahead. Mom is a very busy woman, managing a ton of dialysis clinics in Hampton Roads, and combine that with her after work workout routine equates to not a lot of time for dinner prep. She also like to make salads and such for lunch or a quick dinner and we always end up coming up with new ideas for pasta salad. Pasta salad is great because you can make a huge bowl of it and divide it up for lunches throughout the week. This is one of my favorite pasta salad recipes and I use the dressing a lot for other dishes. However, we wanted to incorporate the plethora of basil that my Mom has grown in her garden, so we made up a batch of sun-dried tomato pesto and I decided to use that as my inspiration for this week’s pasta salad. I also used this salad as a sort of “cleaning out the fridge/pantry” dish, which actually ended up working out really well. A co-worker of mine gave me a bunch of the sweetest grape tomatoes ever and I have been waiting to use them in something like this. I also added some leftover steamed broccoli, a bag of wacky mac pasta (which is why the pasta is an assortment), cubed mozzarella, and a can of cannellini beans for some protein. The beans were a last minutes addition as I didn’t feel like grilling up chicken, but they ended up being wonderful in this. You could also add some chickpeas if you had those around.

Below is a recipe for the pesto we made, I based it off the traditional pesto recipe I would make at the bakery but added sun-dried tomatoes for something different. I think it turned out very well and I will use the leftovers for some bruschetta.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
2 cup fresh basil
3/4 cup pine nuts
3 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon each of salt and pepper
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 1/2-2 cups extra virgin olive oil (depending on the consistency you are looking for)
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Add basil, pine nuts, garlic, s&p and sun-dried tomatoes to a food processor and pulse until chopped. Add olive oil and pulse until smooth. Add Parmesan and pulse until just combined. Put into jar and refrigerate. When ready to use, set out on counter the come to room temperature.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 11:11 am and is filed under Lunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.