How to Make Walnut and Garlic Pasta

How to Make Walnut and Garlic Pasta Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com. Today I have a simple, yet delicious walnut garlic pasta. Kind of a pesto thing with some fresh herbs and let me show you this, so easy, so simple. We’re just going to start with some garlic, a lot of it like four or five, six big cloves. I’ve got some fresh herbs from the garden just going to serve with mint, oregano, tarragon, basil, kind of the sweet herbs. And what you should do course of herbs. I grew up some herbs. I also have a nice little lemon tree. I'm going to add some lemon to this later. But anyway, have herbs in your backyard. You’ll be happy you did. In a mortar and pestle, okay we’re actually not in the pestle and a mortar. I'm going to chop my garlic just roughly. I'm going to chop my herbs just roughly. I'm going to put a pinch of salt and I'm going to pound them, okay. Now for amounts, I showed you the garlic. That’s about a half of cup of herbs picked. Okay, now see that big pestle. That came with the ball and I'm going to switch the smaller pestle because it just did a better job. It’s not the size of your pestle its how you work it. So this smaller thinner or heavier one, this was working better. I'm going to pound those herbs and garlic into a nice paste. I'm going to add handful walnuts about a half cup and I'm going to pound those. I'm going to go ahead and add about a quarter cup of olive oil and just keep mashing it in. What's happening in there is that crushed garlic and crushed herb are really infusing that olive oil with a ton of flavor. So we’ll do that a couple of times. All together, I'm going to add about a half of cup oil in here. Now when it gets to the end, you can just add like the last third in there because it’s already in infusing flavors. Now since I'm mashing it for nothing. I'm going to throw in some hot pepper. I don’t mash that because of you mash those seeds, it just gets way too hot and so I'm just going to sprinkle those in. Add about a half of cup of grated parmesan and here we go. I'm using whole grain pasta. You really should be in the whole grain pasta. It kind of tastes the same as regular. I’ve got a nice little nub of butter there. So I'm going to pour on my -- about 2/3 of a cup of pesto by the time I was finished mixing all this stuff together. Now when you drain the pasta, you don’t have to get every spec of water off it because a little bit of water helps mix everything together. I mean we’ll switch to a couple of forks here and just toss that. Now we’re going to add our cheese at this point. I didn’t add it together with the pesto because there's something about the oil in the pesto mixing with the cheese at the exact same time with the hot pasta that -- I don’t know, I'm not like a scientist. But I think the cheese works better if you add it right at that point. We’ll add a few walnuts. All right, a little more cheese on top. To finish, I'm going to squeeze a lemon out here. Lemon gives it a really nice bright flavor. It really wakes things up. And of course, you're going to taste and adjust the seasonings, salt and pepper. And what more could you ask, okay. It’s just kind of boring but it’s so delicious. Everything doesn’t have to be like exploding with color and decorative cuts and garnishes. This is just down home country Italian I guess. I don’t know, who’s Italian—American, so maybe it’s American, who knows. Just a great fresh easy quick lunch, fresh herbs in the backyard and garlic and walnuts make a great quick pesto. All right, go to the site to get more info and the ingredients of course. And as always, enjoy.