Saturday, February 2, 2013

Pesto Pasta (almost)... includes pesto recipe

I used to be quite the pasta girl. To tell you the truth, now that I have been without for quite some time, I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. Though the idea of having some every once in a while pops into my mind. So I have tried a few different grain free options, including buckwheat noodles (or Soba... if you try these make sure the ingredients list only buckwheat, some include wheat flour as well) and black bean noodles. Both of these are grain free, but very starchy. When they cook, the water boils over like crazy (the wooden spoon across the top trick does not work here), so you have to watch it closely. These options are good if you really want pasta, but taste closer to whole wheat pasta. Anyway, I would eat them again, but figure I don't miss pasta that much to make the effort.

Fast forward to this weekend. I picked up something new to try in the noodle arena because I thought I'd give making pasta another try. This time I bought Kelp Noodles. These are made solely of Kelp and salt extracted from Seaweed. They are virtually calorie free (6 calories per serving, 18 in the whole bag). They are very easy to use and don't require any cooking. All you have to do is take them out of the bag and rinse them. If you have any left you are supposed to store them in water.

I decided to try these with pesto sauce, so I will include my recipe for that too.

Here they are before:



Here is my pesto recipe that I used to add to my clear Kelp Noodles...

Delicious Pesto Sauce

Very simple: Blend together 4 cups of basil (you can also use parsley or arugula or a mixture), 1 cup of olive oil, 1/2 cup of toasted pine nuts (you can also use walnuts), 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, 1-2 cloves of garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Voila! You have your pesto. :)



After rinsing the noodles, add your pesto sauce. Enjoy! The noodles were pretty tasteless and didn't impart any weird taste, so I think they are good to enjoy with any sauce. 



Note: One thing that's a bit different about these noodles is that they are slightly crunchy. I'm kind of weird about textures, so I'm not sure I will use these as a pasta alternative in the future. Because even though they were great and perfectly fine, I couldn't get over the idea of crunchy pasta. But I will definitely use them in soups and salads where a little crunch is possibly expected. :)

1 comment:

  1. I like your pesto recipe. I'll have to try the noodles

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