Bacon and Mushroom Penne With Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

Submitted by Iron Chef - Fat Cat

"This is a recipe that I found online. I have modified this recipe slightly by adding bacon, mushroom and sunflower seed. It works equaly well with chorizo instead of bacon. Sunflower seed is optional, it gives a bit of texture to the dish."

 

• Ready In: 25mins
• Ingredients: 9
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 340 g penne pasta
• 4 slices bacon
• 1⁄2 cup mushroom, sliced
• 20 g sunflower seeds
• 1 (240 g) jar sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
• 4 garlic cloves
• salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup fresh basil leaf
• 1⁄2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

directions

1. Cook the pasta as directed on the package. Drain and reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
2. Chop bacon, fry gently in a frying pan.
3. Add mushrooms.
4. Blend the sun-dried tomatoes and their oil, garlic, and basil in a food processor and blend until the tomatoes are finely chopped.
5. Transfer the tomato mixture to a large bowl. Stir in the Parmesan.
6. Add the pasta, mushrooms and bacon to the pesto and toss to coat, adding enough reserved cooking liquid to moisten.
7. Season the pasta, to taste, with salt and pepper and serve.

Reviews

[Caroline Cooks]

Enjoyed the flavors. I used Walnuts, sun-dried tomatoes in oil and pulsedthe pesto in the food processor. Cooked the other ingredients and tossed with some spiral pasta. Made for "I recommend" tag game.

 

[Karen Elizabeth]

I also added my garlic to the onions, - oh, I added an onion! - and in fact did not make a pesto, cooked off the onion, bacon, added mushrooms, and added the finely sliced sun-dried tomatoes and basil close to the end. I also used pine-nuts, since thats what I had. Tossed it with wholewheat fusilli and my DH enjoyed this so much, he had seconds...almost unheard of!!!! Thank you for a very nice recipe!!! Made for PAC Spring 2008

 

[Jewelies]

Yum, this is really nice. Instead of adding the garlic to the sun-dried tomato mix I decided to cook it with the bacon. We are just not very fond of lots of raw garlic and prefer it cooked. I didn't have sunflower seeds but instead used pine nuts and they gave the dish a really nice, nutty flavour. Luckily I received an automatic pasta maker for Christmas and was able to make some beautiful fresh penne pasta that complimented this extremely well. Enjoyed this very much, thank you for posting and please post some more recipes soon.