Pesto, pasta, and peas

Normally, a recipe titled Pasta, Pesto, and Peas would not grab my attention. But I had some leftover homemade pesto I wanted to use up, so I searched online for a pasta and pesto dish. Don't let the unexciting name fool you... this dish was really good.

I originally made the pesto for this Mozzarella Grilled Cheese Sandwich that I saw on an episode of Tyler's Ultimate. It's made with fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, fresh sourdough bread and pesto....kind of an adult spin on the traditional grilled cheese. A great sandwich when you're looking for feel-good comfort food. And who doesn't love a good grilled cheese?

I made the pasta dish at the beginning of last week, and we had plenty of leftovers for the rest of the week. It's meant to be eaten at room temperature, but I made it as a cold pasta "salad". That worked out really well though because it was HOT here last week, and when you live on a 3rd floor walk-up with no a/c, 1) you do not want to be slaving over a hot oven or stove, and 2) you want to eat something cool and refreshing. And, of course, leftovers are perfect when you have limited time, aka kids. So, kids + great food + no cooking = a perfect combination. I served it with a side salad of local organic mixed greens and cucumbers, and tomatoes. Even I was surprised at how good this was!

If you want to make it even easier, you can use jarred pesto. But I thought the homemade pesto was worth the extra effort. For the pasta recipe, I made a couple minor changes. 1) I omitted the pine nuts (mainly because I didn't have any leftover after making the pesto, and they don't come cheap), 2) I used light mayo, and 3) I added diced chicken. I seasoned two chicken breasts with salt and pepper and baked them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Then I diced them into about 1-inch pieces and mixed them into the pasta salad to make sure the chicken was coated with the pesto and spinach mixture (you probably won't need all the chicken for this dish, so you can use any leftover cooked chicken for something else). You could also buy a cooked rotisserie chicken to save some time.

Also, I cut the recipe in half since the original recipe yields 12 servings. I will definitely make this again. Another great dish for spring and summer.

You can find the original recipe here ~ Pasta, Pesto and Peas, from the fabulous Ina Garten.

Enjoy!