Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Pasta

This sauce is so amazingly good! I would love to take credit for it but it's an only slightly adapted version from Heidi's blog, which I love! Please go to her original version here for the full recipe. I'll still post it here as I've provided weights and made a couple changes.

The obvious carrier for this sauce is pasta but it would equally be good as a sandwich spread, in wraps, rice salads, quesadillas etc.... it's very versatile. The pasta I've used here is the new vegan fresh pasta available at Waitrose. Many thanks to Steven from Lustrous Musings who tweeted about these! I have seriously missed fresh pasta and although I do make my own now and again, love the convenience of these. Plus, they are seriously good, my favourite not the one I used here but the spinach and plain noodle shape. Yay for fresh vegan pasta!!!


Makes enough sauce to serve 2 as a pasta sauce:

90g sun dried tomatoes in oil (I use one in a marinated oil)
2 medium garlic cloves
couple big pinches red chilli flakes
60ml extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
40g pine nuts, lightly toasted in a dry frying pan
250g fresh vegan pasta or 200g dried

Add the sun dried tomatoes, garlic, chilli flakes, olive oil, thyme and salt to a food processor until fine and crumbly. Add the pine nuts and process until fine and crumbly. NOTE - my food processor is crap at coping with small quantities. I process the sun dried tomatoes in there but grind the garlic and pine nuts in a mortar and pestle, otherwise they just whirl around underneath the blades and never get processed. I then add everything else to the M&P and process that way.

It should look like this in texture.

Now simply cook your pasta in salted water, drain - reserving some of the cooking water, return to the pot and toss with the sauce. Add some of the reserved water if needed to make it more saucy. Season with salt and pepper and if you have it, finely grate some extra mature cheddar cheezly on top.

♥