Table for One: Basil Pesto Pasta

By popular demand, I decided to cook again. And blog about it.

Refresher course: A few years ago, some dear friends gave me a cookbook “Table for One.” I never used it until the recent isolation times. (See Table for One: Chicken Poppyseed for Season 1). So here’s your next post without the actual recipe because it’s not actually mine.

I actually cooked this meal a week or two ago, but didn’t feel like blogging about it until today. I don’t know why I felt the need to say that except that my grandma sent dinner over for me for today and I don’t want her thinking that I didn’t eat it because I did. Thanks, grandma.

Ok, so the recipe.

Some thoughts on the ingredients.

Who in the world ever has pine nuts? I needed like a teaspoon or something and now I don’t know what to do with the rest. I bought them specifically for this recipe with Smith’s ClickList because I no likey grocery stores right now and also I don’t know where I’d even find them so better to just let someone else find them. Anyone need some? Anyone know what else to do with them?

So since I specifically sought out pine nuts, that doesn’t explain why I didn’t have all the other ingredients, haha. It asked for Romano cheese (you know, fresh). I didn’t have Romano, but I did have Parmesan in a shaker can and that worked. And at this exact moment, I looked at this picture above and it says Parmesan & Romano cheese. So I DID have (not fresh) Romano. Brilliant.

Spaghetti noodles are an easy replacement for angel hair.

And fresh basil? Well my roommate has a basil plant and it needed to be put to good use.

So the instructions are to put some of those things into a blender or food processor.

One of my roommates has a Blendtec that is super sweet. Will it blend? NOOOOOO! It will not. Wait, what?

I seriously think I found one of the only things that a Blendtec won’t blend. And that is the single-person-portioned-out ingredients for basil pesto sauce. The ingredients weren’t enough to rise above the blender blade so it couldn’t chop or blend anything. “Table for One” major fail!

So I didn’t have any other option than a little food chopper thing that worked…sort of.

Do you know how to cook noodles? If not, I took a picture for you. I like to break my noodles in half and I never wait until it’s boiling to add them and I don’t add salt. So the real question is do I know how to cook noodles?

And that’s pretty much it. Drain the noodles. Mix in the pesto basil “sauce” that’s kind of choppy and voila.

This picture makes the dish look just like your average marginal noodle dish. And it was. I mean, it was decent after I added more Parmesan on top, but it wasn’t amazing.

I ate it all. I was still hungry. Table for one is a terrible idea, but I’ll probably try it again.