Pesto Pasta – What Jessica Baked Next

Copycat recipe of Marks & Spencer pasta salad with spinach, pesto and pine nuts. Picnic season has arrived and this is the perfect, easy pasta salad to enjoy this summer.

I’m back with a scrumptious, easy-to-make and filling pasta recipe. I’ve already expressed my sincere love for Marks & Spencer food, with this recent recipe for Chocolate Chunk Shortbread (Marks & Spencer Copycat Recipe).

I enjoy recreating some of my favourite foodie finds at home, so up next is a homemade take on a pasta salad I enjoy from Marks & Spencer. I absolutely love anything with pesto, homemade pesto is unbeatable. It’s easy to make, and, once mastered, tastes like pesto made in Italy.

We had an abundance of fresh basil in our garden and decided this would be a good use for homemade pesto!

If I remember correctly, this pasta salad was previously made with orzo pasta, but has since been made with farfelle. I love farfelle – meaning butterfly in Italian.

With the summer season here, we’re enjoying lots of fresh, healthy homemade meals. It’s not summer without endless Greek salads either! If you’re a lover of Greek salads, then this Greek Pasta Salad is another brilliant choice.

This pasta salad is ready in less than half an hour. It’s a delicious recipe, bringing flavours of the Mediterranean to your kitchen. It’s fab for taking to summer picnics, barbecues, or for packed lunches. Feel free to add some chopped cherry tomatoes or even sun-dried tomatoes to the mix.

With lots of textures and tonnes of flavour, this is a summer pasta salad you just have to make!

Pesto Pasta Salad (Marks & Spencer Copycat Recipe)

Copycat recipe of Marks & Spencer pasta salad with spinach, pesto and pine nuts. Picnic season has arrived and this is the perfect, easy pasta salad to enjoy this summer.

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 12

Total Time 27

Servings 10

Author What Jessica Baked Next

Ingredients

Pesto

60 g fresh basil leaves roughly two big handfuls
1 clove of garlic peeled and left whole
50 g pine nuts lightly toasted in a dry pan
55 g Parmesan or Grana Padano finely grated
5-6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil add more if needed to adjust consistency
salt and black pepper to taste

Pasta

500 g farfelle pasta
roughly two large handfuls of baby spinach roughly chopped/torn into smaller pieces - removing any tough stalks

Serving

extra grated Parmesan/Grana Padano, pine nuts and basil leaves if desired

Instructions

Start by preparing the pesto. Dry toast the pine nuts in a small pan until lightly coloured. In a food processor, pulse together the basil, garlic, toasted pine nuts and Parmesan/Grana Padano until they are minced.
With the processor on slow speed, add the oil (a tablespoon at a time) in a slow stream. Now season to taste with salt and black pepper. Process for another minute until all the ingredients are combined.
Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions - mine took 12 minutes. Once cooked, drain and rinse with cold water. Drain again. Tip the cooked pasta into a large mixing bowl and stir through the pesto. You might need to add another tablespoon or two of olive oil at this point just to get the correct consistency.
Now add the chopped spinach, check the seasoning and season with any extra salt and black pepper if needed.
I like to stir through a couple of tablespoons of extra toasted pine nuts and some more coarsely grated Parmesan/Grana Padano cheese - this is optional. Cover the bowl and chill the pasta salad for at least 4 hours before serving - I leave mine overnight.
The pasta salad will keep stored in the fridge for up to 5 days.

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A great basil pesto recipe! Learn how to make to this Italian classic in a few simple steps and with just a handful of ingredients.

Today I’m sharing a really simple recipe for fresh basil pesto. It’ll take you literally minutes to make and tastes out of this world good! This homemade pesto is the best pesto I have made to date and it couldn’t be any easier or simpler to make!

The “secret” ingredient that makes my pesto taste so good is the roasted garlic. Roasted garlic is such an underrated ingredient, it transforms this pesto and adds a light and sweet flavour. Before I perfected my own pesto recipe, I’d always made pesto with raw garlic. It’s ok, but I find it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth afterwards, whereas the roasted garlic is sweeter and gives a more rounded flavour without leaving a bitter aftertaste. I found these instructions for roasting garlic here. It filled my kitchen with most gorgeous garlic aroma and I would highly recommend you give it a try!

With just a handful of ingredients this basil pesto is not only satisfying on the taste buds, but because it’s so easy and quick to prepare it is definitely worth going to the extra effort to make it yourself. Pesto will store in the fridge for up to a week, so it’s ready and waiting for you to use to make a tasty dinner. You can’t beat this pesto mixed through cooked pasta, it’s delicious.

Ingredients:

2 x 30g (60g in total) bags of fresh basil leaves

3 cloves roasted garlic (only use 1-2 small cloves of fresh garlic)

50g pine nuts, toasted

55g Parmesan or other vegetarian hard cheese, freshly grated

5-6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. In a food processor pulse together the basil, garlic, pine nuts and Parmesan until they are minced.

2. With the processor on slow speed add the oil (a tablespoon at a time) in a slow stream. Now season to taste with salt and black pepper. Process for another minute until all the ingredients are combined.

3. Place the pesto in a jar or bowl and drizzle over a little extra oil to cover the top – this keeps it fresh. Store in the fridge for up to one week.

Recipe Notes:

If you cannot find pine nuts you can easily substitute with walnuts, almonds, cashews or pistachios. For a nut-free version you can substitute with sunflower seeds.
Adjust the consistency of your pesto by adding a tablespoon less or more oil.
When toasting the pine nuts always toast on a medium heat in a dry pan. Watch them as they burn very easily and will taste bitter.

There are endless ways of serving this fresh basil pesto recipe. In the summer and when it’s too hot to cook and I don’t feel like putting together anything too elaborate for lunch or dinner, then pasta salad is a lifesaver! I simply mixed together cooked orzo/risoni with this basil pesto, then I added halved cherry tomatoes and mozzarella pearls (bocconcini). Delicious Caprese pasta salad and this will last for a week in the fridge. You can use any pasta you like, sometimes I use fusilli, penne or even orecchiette.