Pasta is one of our favorite foods, and it’s not only because we love carbs – it’s also because pasta is so versatile and vegetarian-friendly. There’s a million different ways you can cook up pasta without relying meat, using all manner of ingredients in all kinds of variations, and we’re happy whenever we stumble across a new pasta recipe. This one is based on a recipe we found recently in the New York Times, and it incorporates two ingredients we love: pesto and halloumi cheese. We’ve gone on a kick making things with halloumi previously, using the traditional method of grilling this cheese, but here the halloumi is shredded and incorporated right into the pasta. That was interesting enough that we had to try this out, and the result was tasty, filling, and incredibly satisfying.
To make this, you’ll need:
- Olive oil
- Garlic
- A serrano chile
- Thyme
- 3 15.5-ounce cans of cannellini beans
- A pound of pasta
- 5 Massel 7’s Chicken-style bouillon cubes
- 2 lemons
- 12 ounces of halloumi cheese
- Pine nuts
- 4 ounces of arugula
- Parsley
First you’ll want to do some ingredient prep: thinly slice 10 garlic cloves, cut your chile straight down the middle, bring 5 cups of water to boil and dissolve in your bouillon cubes, drain and rinse all your beans, and pluck off 2 tablespoons of thyme leaves. Warm 1/2 cup of olive oil over medium-high heat in the largest pan you have and place in the garlic and chile to cook for 2 minutes.
Now put your beans, thyme, and stock into the pan and add in all of your pasta. Season everything with generous amounts of salt and pepper.
Cover the pan with a lid, turn the heat down to medium, and let everything cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until the pasta becomes tender – check every so often to see if you need to add more liquid. Then take the lid off and remove the pan from the heat to let the pasta sit until everything is done.
Meanwhile, measure out 2/3 cup of pine nuts and toast them in a small, dry skillet over medium heat for 3 minutes, making sure to watch that they don’t burn. Place all your arugula in a food processor, along with 1/2 cup of parsley leaves and 1/3 cup of olive oil. Chop up 4 garlic cloves and add those in as well, along with the toasted pine nuts.
Mix everything together in the food processor until you have a smooth paste, then scoop this out into a bowl and stir with another 1/4 cup of olive oil until you have a pesto sauce. Mix about 2/3 of this sauce with the pasta, and then take out the chile. Shred up all of your halloumi and stir half of it into the pasta.
Now you can scoop up servings and pasta and eat with extra pesto and halloumi on top.
This was an incredibly tasty meal – we served it when Miriam’s parents were visiting, and they’d never had halloumi or pesto made from arugula before, but they both loved it so much that they took second helpings. And we enjoyed watching all these ingredients come together into an interesting meal: we got to cook the pasta directly in some seasoned broth, rather than just boiling and draining it, and we made an easy pesto from parsley and arugula instead of your traditional basil. Then for a finishing touch we used shredded halloumi, instead of the usual Parmesan, to round out the sauce and serve as a topping over everything. It all ended up being a very rich pasta dish that we happily dug into. There are a lot of ingredients that you need for this recipe, but all in all it’s not too difficult to make, and the result is this amazing new twist on pasta.