Donal's Real Time Recipes airs Wednesday at 8.00pm on RTÉ One.
Ingredients
Serves: 4
Time: 20 minutes
- 400g pasta - rigatoni, penne or tortiglioni work well here
- 300g mixed tomatoes; a mixture of one large vine and multicoloured cherry
- 100g basil
- 1 clove garlic
- 50g pine nuts
- 75g capers
- 100g parmesan, plus extra to serve
- 100 - 150ml extra virgin olive oil
- Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Firstly, fill a pot a quarter full of water and place over a high heat with a lid, Boil the kettle and place into a large pot. Season with salt and add the pasta.
- Whilst pasta cooks, chop the cherry tomatoes finely and use a box grater to grate any larger tomatoes, scooping both pulp and juices into a bowl. Season with salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil, stir and set aside.
- Now, toast pine nuts in separate pan until golden. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- For the pesto, get the basil onto your chopping board and grab the garlic clove. Mash the garlic onto the chopping board with sea salt, and put to one side then chop the basil and slowly mix the chopped garlic and basil together.
- Add the pine nuts and continue to chop then add the parmesan and some salt and pepper. When everything is finely chopped, drizzle over about 50ml of the olive oil, chopping again to mix everything then add half of the pesto to the bowl with the tomatoes. Stir through the capers.
- Now, drain the pasta and put into the bowl with the tomatoes and toss everything together - adding more parmesan and some salt and black pepper. Fold the pasta and 'sauce' together and add more oil if needed.
- Serve into bowls with the extra pesto, parmesan and a final hit of extra virgin olive oil.
