Trofie with Zucchini, Pesto and Walnuts

Tonight I made a meal that felt like a celebration of summer both in its fresh, seasonal ingredients as well as in its simplicity of preparation, important on those days when all you've done is play outside under the beautiful blue sky!

I stopped by a local farm at the end of the day today without a shopping list or any idea at all in my mind of what I would prepare for dinner. Inside, I was met with the sight of so many varieties of wonderful produce - the bounty of summer! - and I filled my cart with all the things that looked best. While in the dry goods section, I noticed a pasta I had never tried before, called trofie. Trofie is a pasta from the Italian region of Liguria, and I learned once I got home that it is most commonly served with a pesto sauce.

I had bought a basket of zucchini while at the market, and as I was flipping through cookbooks for ideas I serendipitously found Alice Waters' recipe that combines zucchini with toasted walnuts and pesto to be served over a pasta, and it seemed all too perfect that I had purchased the trofie to go along with it all.

The first step was making a simple pesto sauce. I combined about a quarter cup of toasted pine nuts with two cloves of garlic and mashed them into a paste with my mortar and pestle.

Next I took a heaping handful of basil leaves from my garden, processed them lightly in my food processor, and mixed them into the pine nuts and garlic along with some salt and pepper, 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Then I julienned one very large zucchini to approximately match the length of the pasta.

Next I put a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium heat, and toasted some walnuts until they became medium brown.

I immediately added the zucchini at this point to stop further browning of the walnuts, and sauteed it until it became just limp, adding a touch of salt.

I boiled the trofie, then just before draining it I added a ladleful of its cooking water to the zucchini mixture, then mixed in the drained pasta along with the pesto sauce and served immediately.

It was very good! It was light but flavorful and took only about 25 minutes from start to finish.