Pesto Sauce (con pasta)

I was going to post this recipe earlier but it's been a hectic few days. Apartment hunting and packing. All that fun stuff.

I've never made my own pesto sauce before so this was a first for me. I didn't look up any other recipes online so I just eyeballed all the portions. I had a basic understanding of what goes into a pesto sauce, and I decided to make a spinach-basil pesto sauce. I was surprised how successful it turned out and ate pesto 2 days straight. I still have some left in the fridge!

Anyhow, here are the ingredients:

- A bag of baby spinach (approximately 4 cups)
- 7 sprigs of basil, chop off stems
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 cup of toasted pine nuts (I toasted my own)
- 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tsp salt
- 2 tsp pepper
- 1/4 cup grated parmigiano reggiano (optional)

- 5 cremini mushrooms, sliced
- sprinkle of pine nuts
- 100 grams cavatappi pasta

Directions:

Toss the spinach, basil, garlic, and pine nuts into a food processor. Slowly pulse the mixture until the leaves are fine. Then, add in the olive oil, salt and pepper, and the cheese if you'd like, and pulse until well-incorporated. I decided not to add the cheese in my pesto sauce because I wanted to taste the spinach and basil mixture. Cheese tends to overpower certain flavours I find.

While making your sauce, you should cook your pasta. I chose cavatappi pasta (my grocery store has all these cool Italian pastas) because it looked like a giant curly macaroni.
In a pan, add a little oil and add in the sliced mushrooms. Then add in pasta and the pesto sauce. The amounts I made were enough for 3 meals. So just eyeball how much pesto you put in. Let the pesto cook a little bit to release the pungent flavours of the garlic and basil.
Top off your pasta with some toasted pine nuts and pepper.

Pesto was a lot easier than I expected to make. I just never had access to a food processor until my roommate brought her's in to make pie with.

The day after I made the sauce, I made a pesto seafood pasta, and all you do is add some diced onions and seafood to the mix! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of that meal because it looked too good to wait to eat!

P.S. to toast pine nuts, all you do is throw them into a pan (no oil) and toast them over medium heat until they turn golden brown. Remember to shake them around and keep an eye on them!