Buckwheat & pesto salad

I am slowly working on my side dishes of which some need to be gluten free.  Of course, use regular pasta if you don’t need gluten free for this one.  I personally think that any gluten free pasta needs a flavour packed sauce so this is my favourite old Pesto recipe from the ancient 2BL Great Weekends book with recipes from Maureen Simpson. This is a great Spring dish so you can also add lots of other ingredients.  Fresh asparagus, thin slices of red, green and yellow capsicum or sugar snap peas would also be nice and would give you a lovely ‘crunch’. I have doubled the pesto recipe here and didn’t quite use it all for a 250g packet of buckwheat spirals.  The sauce sticks to the spirals making it the best choice for a pasta salad.  You could easily double the pasta for a large crowd with this quantity of sauce, especially with other ingredients added. Assemble and serve when pasta is cool enough to add the rocket.  Otherwise it needs warming a little to serve.  Don’t serve from the refrigerator, even sitting at room temperature for a few hours it wasn’t as delicious as when it was freshly prepared. Ingredients:  Serves 4-6 Pesto: 1 cup tightly packed fresh basil leaves 4 large cloves of garlic 2 tablespoons of toasted pine nuts 1/2 cup olive oil 3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese small pinch sea salt & freshly ground black pepper 1 x 250g packet Gluten free buckwheat pasta spirals handful of rocket leaves 1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved extra pine nuts for garnish Method:

1. In a food processor, finely chop the basil leaves, garlic and pinenuts.
2. With the motor running, add the oil in a slow, steady stream until you have a smooth paste
3. Add parmesan and season
4. Cook pasta for 8 minutes in boiling, salted water until cooked (check the cooking time on the packet)
5. Drain and fold through pesto while still hot so the flavour is absorbed into the pasta.
6. Set aside to cool before adding extra ingredients of your choice.

Unfortunately the pesto will loose its brilliant green colour when its stirred through the hot pasta.  Still tastes great and is terrific served as a side dish for a bar-b-que or with roast meats and a green salad.