Sprout & Pea

My absolute favorite meals are those made on the fly with left­over ingre­di­ents in my refrig­er­a­tor. This week I just so hap­pened to have a lot of left­over food and it some­how all mag­i­cally meshed well together. Don’t ask why, but I had an insane amount of feta cheese sit­ting in my refrig­er­a­tor so with that in mind, I entered my kitchen and with the food before me, I started to sali­vate over the idea of mak­ing some kind of pesto. I had arugula, pars­ley, and parme­san and on the counter, some left­over pis­ta­chios. I’m a firm believer that no pesto is com­plete with­out basil, so I cheated and ran around the cor­ner to pick some up. Since I always keep some quinoa pasta around, I whipped together my impromptu pesto, tossed it on the pasta and in a last moment of cre­ativ­ity, topped it with a poached egg. Had there been enough, the only thing that could have made this dish bet­ter would have been some more crushed pis­ta­chios toasted and sprin­kled on top. When your imag­i­na­tion gets going, some­times it just doesn’t stop. I’d like to thank my eyes that were big­ger than my stom­ach when pur­chas­ing too much feta cheese for this deli­cious and spon­ta­neous meal. With tasty fla­vors and tex­tures, it’s one that I def­i­nitely plan to make again. Here’s how to pre­pare it…

3 cups arugula
1 1/​2 cups of basil
1/​2 cup feta cheese
1/​4 cup olive oil
1/​2 cup pis­ta­chios
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs pars­ley
1 clove gar­lic
1 box quinoa spaghetti (reserve cook­ing liq­uid)
2 eggs
2 tbs white vine­gar
salt and pep­per to taste
parme­san cheese for garnish

In a food proces­sor, com­bine arugula, basil, feta, olive oil, pis­ta­chios, lemon, pars­ley and gar­lic. Blend until fully chopped and mixed. In a medium pot, cook quinoa pasta for about 9 min­utes and drain, reserv­ing some of the cook­ing liq­uid. While the pasta is cook­ing, bring water and 2 tbs of white vine­gar to boil for the eggs. Add pasta back into pot and mix in pesto. Add a small amount of cook­ing liq­uid to help mix the pesto and pasta together. Cover to keep warm while you poach the eggs. Break each egg into a small cup and pour into the sim­mer­ing vine­gar water. Bring whites towards the yolk with a spoon and remove after about 4 min­utes. Trans­fer pasta to two bowls and top with egg, gar­nish with parme­san and sea­son with salt and pepper.