I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm taking my desire to try all kinds of cool things with corn a little too far. Up until now, things have turned out pretty dern, yummy, but this week, I've hit a so-so dish. I'm not sure what I could do to make it better (maybe less pine nuts?), but we weren't thrilled with this dish. Really makes you wonder why I'm sharing it, huh? I guess the need to blog or something. It wasn't that bad, but then again, it wasn't great either. I think that the work-of-making-your-own-pesto to results ratio is just not in this dish's favor. Oh well! We did serve it with grilled chicken that I coated with dijon mustard which turned out pretty good (minus the small piece that I overcooked). Anyway, here's the recipe from epicurious.com, and here's what I did!
Pasta with a Corn Pesto
Ingredients
8 oz whole grain pasta (we used linguine)
4 cups corn (either fresh or canned...I used 2 cans of no salt added sweet corn)
5 slices of low sodium bacon
3 cloves of garlic, minced
3/4 cup fresh basil, coarsely torn
1/3 extra virgin olive oil
1/3 toasted pine nuts
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 sweet onion, chopped
Directions
Cool bacon in a non-stick skillet. Place on a plate covered with a paper towel to drain grease. Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease and saute the onions in it. Remove the onions and add them to the plate with the bacon.
Add corn, garlic, salt, and pepper to drippings in skillet. Sauté over medium-high heat until corn is just tender but not brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer 1 1/2 cups corn kernels to small bowl and reserve. Scrape remaining corn mixture into processor. Add 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup fresh basil and pine nuts. Add olive oil and blend until pesto is almost smooth. Set pesto aside.
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain, reserving 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot. Toss pasta mixture over medium heat until warmed through, adding reserved pasta cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls to thin to desired consistency (I used about 1/2 cup). Mix in onions, bacon and remaining basil and corn. Season pasta to taste with salt and pepper.
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