Conchiglioni with pesto, asparagus and bacon

Making home made pesto is a regular occurrence in my house and today I put making pesto in the Vitamix to the test.

Aaah English asparagus season is just about still with us and I’m enjoying a couple of bundles each week whilst it lasts.

This quickly assembled pasta dish is given greater gravitas with the inclusion of these gigantic pasta shells – conchiglioni to give them their technical term – which look like ones from Carluccio’s but were in fact by Tesco Finest range.

Conchiglioni seem so much grander and bountiful than ordinary conchiglie pasta shells. I’ve fed them to dinner guests whereas I’d probably not serve up their smaller relatives.

Although three times the usual size, the cooking time remains the same.

Which is just as well because today’s recipe is for me hosting Jacc’s Pasta Please under the theme of Fasta Pasta. Your submitted dish must be on the table inside 30 minutes which neatly coincides with mine and Katie’s 30 minutes and under Speedy Suppers event (which for this month will be a pasta only affair).

Now I know pasta is possibly the ultimate convenience food and yes you can boil it in 10 minutes so yes of course you can get it on the table in 30 minutes. BUT – I don’t want to see any short cut bottled sauces nor ragus requiring aeons of bubbling away.

Keep it fresh, keep it fast and each submitted recipe on the linky below counts as an entry to Pasta Please and Speedy Suppers alike.

Since asparagus is most definitely in season and this dish includes extra veg, I am also entering it into Helen’s and Michelle’s Extra Veg currently hosted by Utterly Scrummy.

I have published a rocket and walnut pesto recipe before on Dinner With Crayons but today’s version was made in the Vitamix.

The Vitamix pesto ingredients were:

• 75g parmesan cheese cut into chunks
• 2 handles of Greek basil (or normal, Greek just happened to be what I had)
• 1 handful of rocket leaves (poking out slightly here)
• 50g walnut pieces
• 2 cloves garlic (or in my case a squeeze of lazy stuff)
• 75ml (ish) olive oil – add whatever you need for consistency you like.

And this is what you get after a minute or so using the Vitamix puree program. Lush Kermit coloured paste.

Whilst the pasta was boiling I chopped up the asparagus (after removing woody stems) and snipped up bacon with kitchen scissors.

Fry the asparagus for a few minutes in olive oil.

Then add the bacon and fry for a few minutes until cooked.

Drain the cooked pasta and toss in the pesto, asparagus and bacon. Shave over some more parmesan and serve!

I hope you will join me in preparing some Fasta Pasta of your own and entering these into Pasta Please and Speedy Suppers – all the details what to do are shown with the linky below.

I am currently roadtesting a machine supplied with the compliments of Vitamix.

Fasta Pasta! Joint event for Pasta Please and Speedy Suppers

To join in, simply post a pasta dish on your blog by the 28th of the month and:

Link to myself and Katie at Feeding Boys as organisers of Speedy Suppers
Link to Tinned Tomatoes as organiser of Pasta Please
Use the Pasta Please and Speedy Suppers logos in your post
If you use twitter, tweet your post with @maisoncupcake @tinnedtoms and #PastaPlease #SpeedySuppers and we will retweet these*

*Remember Tinned Tomatoes is a vegetarian site so if your post is meaty or fishy then just tweet it to myself!

Rules:
Follow the current theme when creating your recipe: a pasta dish made from scratch in under 30 minutes.
One entry per blog.
Recipes must be added to the linky by the 29th June (please note this is a day extra than the badge says for Pasta Please but the linky will be open until end of 29th).