A handful of garden fresh herbs, whizzed up with garlic, olive oil and pine nuts into a delicious herb pesto. Serve with noodles for a quick, Summery dinner.
Do you grow your own herbs? Whether it’s a few windowsill pots or a dedicated garden area for edibles, I love these fragrant and delicious leafy plants!
Grow your own
When we moved into our house, one of the first things we did in the garden was to remove a huge, ugly shrub and replace it with a beautiful, fragrant herb garden. It looks gorgeous, smells divine, and is a handy source of seasoning and recipe inspiration! So far we have grown basil, marjoram, oregano, chives, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme…
I’ve even grown my own camomile flowers for tea! If you have even a little bit of space to give over to herbs, I heartily recommend it. The rewards are huge!
Fresh herb pesto
Usually I only use one or two different herbs at a time. However sometimes I can’t choose, and then we have a bit of everything.
On this occasion, I got carried away and ended up with a huge handful of mixed fresh herbs in varying proportions.
As a result, I’m afraid the ingredients list for this pesto is a bit vague! However, I encourage you to simply grab a handful of mixed fresh herbs with wild abandon, and see what happens. I used sprigs and leaves of marjoram, chives, rosemary, fennel, sage and parsley, and also threw in a few flowers that I’d snipped off the basil.
There were a few chive flowers too, that made a very pretty (and tasty) garnish. As long as you have a good mixture, I think you’ll get a delicious result that’s excitingly different every time!
Oodles of noodles
We tossed our herb pesto through some freshly cooked tagliatelle, as you can see in the photos. The wide, flat noodles were just right as a conduit for this delicious herb pesto. In future I think I would be tempted to try an even wider noodle, like pappardelle.
How to use fresh herb pesto
Obviously this herb pesto is delicious on pasta. However it also makes a great dressing for new potatoes, or a delicious dip or spread with breadsticks, crackers or some fresh vegetable crudités.
It’s also delicious on lightly cooked veggies too. Our garden-fresh herb pesto pasta was served up with some homegrown beans and baby corn from our little vegetable plot for a delicious Summery dinner.
Whizz up this delicious herb pesto, and enjoy. We stretched it between the three of us, but it really only makes enough pesto for two adult servings.
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📖 Recipe
Tagliatelle with garden herb pesto
Ingredients
- 120-150 g tagliatelle
- 20 g mixed fresh herbs – e.g. marjoram, chives, rosemary, fennel, sage, parsley, basil, thyme etc.
- 10 g pine nuts
- 1 small clove garlic
- 15 g grated hard cheese e.g. parmesan or similar
- 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- sea salt and ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Cook the tagliatelle in a large pan of boiling water, according to the packet instructions – ours took 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, wash the herbs and strip the leaves from any tough or woody stems. Place the leaves, pine nuts, garlic, cheese, olive oil and seasonings into a blender or mini-chopper and process for several minutes until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally to make sure everything is well combined.
- When the pasta has cooked, add 1-2 tablespoon of the cooking water to the pesto and blend again to combine.
- Drain the tagliatelle, toss with the pesto, and serve.
Notes
Nutrition
More recipes using herbs
Other delicious recipes using fresh herbs include refreshing watermelon and berry salad with basil mint sugar, delightful giant couscous salad with fresh herbs and crunchy nuts, and flavourful parsley crusted salmon.
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