Pesto Penne & Garlic Bread

I made another batch of pesto as I'm going to try my Pillsbury recipe again and I only needed half. I decided to make a simple Filipino-Italian dinner with the other half. You can do these two dishes with any kind of bread and pasta you prefer. My choice for this dish was penne rigate and wheat pan de sal (a Filipino version of the dinner roll). The latter is the Filipno aspect of the meal. It was delish, filling and just right. No need to go to Olive Garden anymore. Although, I do like their endless soup and salad deal.






Garlic Bread
3 Tbps butter or margarine (softened)
2 Tbsp Garlic Powder or 2 minced garlic cloves
2 Tbsp Dry Basil
2 Tbsp Dry Oregano
2 Tbsp Grated Parmesan (plus extra for garnish)

Combine ingredients. (Sometimes rather than combining them, I'll layer each on the bread like butter, garlic, parmesan, oregano, then basil in that order. Takes a bit more time, but I like doing it that way too.)

Take your bread of choice (dinner roll, baguette, white, wheat...), sliced, exposing the chewy innards, and spread a thin coat of the butter mixture from edge to edge. Please the slices under the broiler until bread is nice and toasted. Roughly 5 mins, if broiler is preheated.

If you're not in a hurry you can toast the bread in a preheated 350˚ oven (roughly 10min) or in a toaster oven. You'll need to keep an eye on these as bread can burn pretty easily especially if you don't have a timer. No one wants burnt toast.

When toasted, sprinkle a little parmesan on top for garnish and enjoy.

This makes about 4 servings.


Pesto
You can see my pesto recipe here.

For this mix, I chopped in some sun-dried tomatoes.


Cooking Pasta
Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. When water is bubbling like crazy, add in pasta of your choice. Season the water liberally with salt. (It'll give the pasta a little flavor). Stir a few time to keep the pasta from stick to each other.

Pasta generally takes about 8-12 minutes to cook, but when in doubt follow the directions on the package.

When the pasta is ready, drain in a strainer or carefully dump out the water from the pot. You'll want a tiny bit of that pasta water for when you mix in the pesto. It'll help combine the two together.


Note: Half the pesto mix will make about 2-3 servings. The full pesto mix will be 4-6 servings. Again it's all what you're in the mood for and how many people.

Mix in pesto with the pasta. I added in a few whole sun-dried tomatoes to give the dish a little color contrast. Add more grated parmesan, mix well and...voila! You're ready to eat.