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For a quick, delicious and tasty meal you can’t go past the combo of spaghetti, peppery rocket pesto and crispy salty bacon. This dish was born out of a need to use up the abundance of freshly grown rocket in my garden. You could just as easily whip it up using a bag of fresh rocket from the produce section of your supermarket or even faster a container of premade basil pesto
Ingredients
Rocket Pesto
150g rocket leaves
35g freshly picked basil
75g pine nuts (lightly toasted)
70g grated Parmesan cheese
2 garlic cloves (peeled & chopped)
¾ cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 x food processor with blade attachment
Pasta
500g of dried spaghetti
400g of streaky bacon rashers
6-8 tablespoons rocket pesto
Parmesan cheese & extra virgin olive oil for garnish
Recipe
Pesto: Place all the ingredients into the food processor, with half of the olive oil. Turn on the process and blend until finely chopped and all the ingredients are incorporated. When it comes together drizzle in the remaining oil through the feed tube in the processor until you have a smooth pesto consistency. Pour into a container until needed.
Pasta: To a big pot of salted boiling water add the spaghetti and cook until al dente (8-10 minutes) While the pasta is boiling grill the rashers of bacon on a tray under a hot grill until nice and crispy. Drain the excess fat on paper towels and then cut into small thin pieces.
When the pasta is cooked, take a mug and drip it into the pasta water, fill it up and place to one side. Drain the pasta using a colander, then place the pasta back into the cooking pot with the pesto and toss through. Use the reserved mug of pasta water to thin the pesto sauce if it’s too thick making sure all the pesto coats the pasta creating a nice creamy sauce consistency. Take half the chopped bacon, mix through the pasta and divide pasta between 4 serving bowls.
To finish divide the remaining bacon between the four bowls sprinkling it over the top, garnish with grated Parmesan and a nice glug of extra virgin olive oil. Or if you’re like me a few decent twists of the pepper grinder.
