Pesto pasta

I like basil very much. I like pesto and I like Caprese salad. They are recurrent dishes in Summer. Both use a lot of basil so I have to keep 2 basil plants, rotate between them and pray that they don't die before the end of Summer.
In Italy pesto is a primo, one of the first dishes of a multi-course meal. It's considered an appetizer.
For me, pesto is a main course. Alas, it has a problem for a main course. Too few ingredients, only pasta and sauce. 
Pesto is a very strong sauce so you either have a small portion (as a primo or starter) or you add something to it. I find pesto difficult to mix with other ingredients. The flavour is so intense and it is so rich that it is overpowering. 
One day I decided to add cherry tomatoes to it and discovered that the fresh and sweet taste of the cherry tomatoes combined perfectly with the pesto and it actually 'cleans' the palate of it's rich taste. Since then, cherry tomatoes are a must!

Serves: 2 persons.

Ingredients:
  • 200g pasta (I used linguine but any type of pasta will do)
  • cherry tomatoes (minimum of 4-5 per person but as many as you'd like)
  • For the pesto sauce:
    • 50g pine nuts
    • 50g Pecorino or Parmesan cheese
    • 50g basil
    • 1 garlic clove
    • 40ml olive oil
    • Salt and pepper to taste
  • To decorate: 
    • pine nuts
    • basil leaves
Method:
  1. Cook the pasta in a pan of salted water. Drain but reserve a cup of the water just in case you need it later.
  2. As the pasta cooks, make the sauce: add all the ingredients to a food processor and blitz. I use the whole basil, leaves and stalks, as the stalks also have flavour. Only the fresh stalks though. Do not use the bottom bit that has started to dry out.

  3. Add the sauce to the cooked pasta and mix. If the pesto is difficult to mix, add some of the reserved cooking water, one spoon at a time.

  4. Plate the pasta, decorate with some pine nuts and basil leaves and add the cherry tomatoes cut in half.

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