Arugula Pesto Pasta Recipe!

This arugula pesto is delicious. Let's make it. You're going to start with a half a cup of smoked almonds. These almonds are delicious. And four cloves of garlic. You're going to put these in a food processor and you want to chop these until they are nice and fine. It might take you a couple of times but keep on chopping until they're nice and fine. Then you're going to add approximately two cups of arugula. Now arugula is pretty peppery. It has a very strong flavor and I absolutely love it. You want to blend this all together until it's all incorporated. A traditional pesto is with basil and pine nuts. This is an alternative to that traditional recipe and this is great for those who don't like the taste of basil. After your mixture has reached a consistency that you like, we're going to season this with the juice of one fresh lemon, some sea salt or regular salt, and also some pepper. This is going to make your sauce delicious. We're also going to add approximately one half cup of olive oil. Typically you stream the olive oil in over a course of time but my processor does not have that luxury so I have to pour it in all at once. You want to taste your sauce to make sure it's at the flavor that you like and that it's the consistency that you like. So this sauce needs to be a little thinner so I'm going to add approximately two or three tablespoons more of the olive oil and you can see the sauce change consistency and the ideal consistency is a paste. You want this to be nice and thick so it can cover every inch of those noodles. All right so I was totally recording when I wasn't expected. Y'all caught me snacking. We are using bucatini for this recipe. Bucatini is approximately three times the size of regular spaghetti. Once your pasta water is boiling you're going to salt it and then add your pasta and you're going to let this pasta cook for approximately 15 to 18 minutes. This is a really nice thick pasta. While our pasta is cooking we are going to prep our garnishes. We're going to cut our cherry tomatoes in half and we have to season it. We're going to lightly season this with salt and pepper. Anything that goes on our plate needs to stand on its own and be seasoned. We're going to season our arugula with some black pepper and a tiny amount of olive oil. The olive oil adds smoothness to the greens when they're on the plate. Guess what? It is time to plate this dish up. I am so excited. Let's get going. First things first is the pasta. You do not have to heat up your pasta sauce. We're going to take the bucatini and I like to do this in a separate bowl to make sure all the pasta is covered before I add it to the plate. You know your pasta is al dente when it has a nice chew to it. It's not crunchy and it's not too mushy. I am going to put three nice large helpings of this pesto on top of this pasta. Like I said, I want to make sure that every single noodle is covered in this delicious olive oil based sauce. So it's up to you. You use as much or as little as you want. Now to get a nice amount on the plate, I'm going to take my tongs. I'm just going to go around and around and around in the pasta until I get enough to put on the plate and you just pick anywhere on the plate that you want this pasta to go. Yes, I know I dropped some. I'm a little upset because my plating is all messed up, but it's okay. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to wipe it off. You know, no worries. And this happens to the best of us. So if this does happen to you, don't freak out. Just wipe your plate off and then let's get back to plating. I am going to add some more of this pesto sauce to my pasta. It looks great for presentation and it ensures that I have enough sauce when I'm digging in. All we're going to do now is add our beautiful tomatoes. Just put them wherever you see fit. And then you're just going to lightly sprinkle some arugula on top, clean off your plate. And there you go. Arugula, pesto, bon appetit. Let's eat.