Homemade Pasta with Pesto and Green Beans

The pesto Lawson made over the weekend was so fresh and good and perfumey that I decided it deserved some homemade pasta. The combination of pesto, homemade pasta, and green beans is not untraditional (though I skipped the potatoes).

The pasta recipe (from both Marcella Hazan and Jack Bishop) was simple: 1 cup of flour and two eggs, mixed in a food processor and then kneaded by hand. I ended up adding a good bit more flour during the kneading and rolling, but stiff pasta dough is not a bad thing.

After reading Ms. Hazan's rant in More Classic Italian Cooking about how pasta machines are evil, I nonetheless pulled out Lawson's lovely old hand-cranked Atlas pasta machine and proceeded to make some fettucine. Here it is waiting to be cooked. The local eggs I used had vibrant, almost orange yolks, which made the raw pasta a lovely yellow.

We had it with the barest salad: red romaine, lemon juice, salt, olive oil, and pepper.

Various Things to Eat

Here's a nice garbanzo bean salad. It contains a cucumber from Dad's garden, some basil, orange bell pepper, lime juice, and olive oil.

Also pictured are limes from our tree--chicas, or little ones, they are called in the Mexican grocery store. I have always wanted some of these Mexican blue glasses for margaritas, and today we found them in a store that was going out of business.

And . . . check out our basil crop. I made pesto today.