Upgrade your regular sauce to this quick and easy pasta with rocket pesto - A delicious refreshing meal ready in 15 min only.
Italian pesto is one of the most "express" sauces in the world.
It only takes two minutes to make it, and in a blink, you have a quick, refreshing and colorful pasta sauce.
I love this rocket pesto sauce almost as much as the traditional basil pesto recipe.
The method is pretty much the same, although the rocket is used in place of basil and pine nuts are replaced with toasted almond flakes.
To make rocket pesto, you only need 6 ingredients: fresh baby rocket leaves, toasted almond flakes (crumbled almonds are ok too!), freshly grated Parmesan cheese, Extra virgin olive oil, the zest of a lemon and a garlic clove.
Making your own pesto is impressively easy:
just put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.
To add extra crunchiness, I leave aside a few almonds flakes, and add them directly when mixing pasta & pesto together, it gives a fantastic sweet and nutty note.
The final touch? A little lemon zest freshly grated on top of your pasta with pesto sauce.
Although you can use your favorite pasta shapes, I always pair rocket pesto with fusilli pasta.
Not only it tastes amazing, but this quick and easy pasta with rocket pesto is packed with healthy benefits incredibly good for you.
Rocket has diuretic, depurative, digestive and tonic properties.
Rich in potassium, iron, calcium, and vitamins A & C and antioxidants, eating fresh rocket can help cleaning and detoxing your body.
This Italian pasta with rocket pesto recipe is ready in 15 min, a tasty choice for a quick spring-perfect meatless Monday lunch!
More Pesto Recipes To Try:
Barley Pea Pesto Salad with Grana Padano and Prosciutto
Wild Garlic Pesto {Vegan & GF}
Quick and Easy Pasta with Rocket Pesto
Ingredients
For the Rocket Pesto:
- 60 g rocket leaves
- 50 g toasted almond flakes
- 3 tablespoon Parmesan cheese, freslhy grated
- zest of 1 lemon
- 100 ml Extravirgin olive oil
- 1 garlic clove, optional
- salt and freshly grated black pepper
To serve:
- 160 g fusilli pasta
- zest of half lemon, freshly grated
- Parmesan cheese, to taste
- 2 tablespoon almond flakes
- a bunch of rocket leaves
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of lightly salted to a boil, then fold in the fusilli pasta and cook until al dente ( about 10 min).
- In the meantime, prepare the pesto sauce.
- Fold all the ingredients and ⅓ of the olive oil into a food processor, and blitz to a thick paste.
- With the motor running on low speed, slowly add the remaining oil through the feed tube.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Drain the pasta, reserving ½ cup cooking water.
- Transfer the pasta back into the pot, mix in a desired amount of pesto sauce and cooking water. Add freshly grated parmesan and decorate with extra rocket leaves, almond flakes and lemon zest, and serve immediately. Enjoy!
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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