Cappellini with walnut&basil pesto, Artichoke with garlic-soy sauce (Dinner 30 June)

Got a nice bunch of artichoke from a local market. It is seasonal. Basil-pesto cappellini topped with tomatoes and ox tongue salad with cucumber also enhanced the summerly atmosphere!

To prepare the artichoke, I referred this site: http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/grilled-artichokes-recipe

Serve the baked artichoke with chopped garlic, olive oil, lemon and soy-sauce. The hint of Soy-sauce enhances the fresh flavour of artichoke!! It was Delicious!!


In the basil pesto, walnuts were accidentally involved. Usually I use pine nuts. However, I found that a pack of pine nuts was disappeared. It was eaten by Mr. Husband for his beer snack. Therefore, instead, I needed to use other nuts. Walnuts were nice however, the problem was, I needed to remove the skin that might make the pesto bitter. It was a pain to peel the skin of walnuts by soaking them in warm water. Therefore, I recommend everybody to use pine nuts in this recipe. 

Cappellini with Basil pesto

Ingredients: a pack of basil (60g), two tablespoonfuls of pine nuts or peeled walnuts, 1 clove of garlic, two tablespoonfuls of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, three tablespoonfuls of olive oil, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 200g cappellini, chopped tomatoes 

1. Chop the basil and put all the ingredients into the blender
2. Process it for 40 seconds until it became pesto
3. Boil plenty of water in a big deep pan and cook for 1.20 mins till it gets al dente
4. take the pasta out and put into a large bowl and add the pesto and mix everything well. If necessary, add some olive oil
5. serve the pasta topped with some chopped tomatos with black pepper

Put all ingredients into a blender to process

In addition, I fried some slices of ox tongue with balsamic vinegar and served on the thinly sliced strips of cucumber. 

It was enjoyable dining indeed with a bottle pf nice red wine!!

Total time to prepare: 50 mins (30 mins for boiling the artichoke, 20 mins for baking it, and pasta and salad were done while cooking artichokes)

Total cost: 4.20 pounds (2 pounds for artichokes, 2 pounds for ox tongue, 20 for other ingredients)