Fresh Flavors from Our Pantry

Good evening everyone!  It's great when you can look inside a pantry and immediately find items that you can combine and create something great.  Tonight is no exception: with one look to our pantry and one look to our freezer, I picked out two items that I might thought would go together.  With a little brainstorming, and a few more ingredients added to the pot, I whipped up something delicious that wasn't too much on our grocery bill.

The Recipe:  Orecchiette with Turkey and Pesto
Another Out of the Culinary original!

What You'll Need:
(serves two)

8 Ounces Orecchiette
1 Pound Ground Turkey
1 Teaspoon Olive Oil
1 1/2 Teaspoons Garlic, minced
1/3 Cup premade Pesto
1/2 Cup grated Parmesan, plus more for serving

To start, bring a medium saucepan with water to boil over medium high heat.  Once the water is at a boil, add the orecchiette and cook to package directions, anywhere between 10-15 minutes, depending on size of the pasta.  Once cooked, drain the pasta in a colander.  Shake the excess water from the orecchiette and keep in the colander.

Meanwhile, heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the olive oil.  Once the pan is heated, add the minced garlic and saute the garlic until it becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute.  After this, add the ground turkey and cook.  If you haven't cooked with ground turkey, it won't brown up like ground beef.  Instead, it will become sort of a gray color.  Don't let this dismay you, this is the color it's supposed to look like.  Also, turkey will take a little bit shorter than ground beef to cook, about 10-12 minutes.  Definitely keep an eye on it, because you don't want your turkey to go brown.

After the turkey is cooked, add the pasta to the skillet and stir.  Add the pesto and Parmesan cheese to this combination and stir again until everything is well combined.  Turn the heat to low and let this mixture have the opportunity to meld all the flavors, about three minutes.  Top with extra Parmesan cheese (if you choose,) serve, and enjoy!

The End Result:

The flavors from this recipe are incredibly delectable and very easy on the palette.  The pesto isn't too heavy in this dish, which I was surprised, because I was going to add more, but the 1/3 cup was just the right amount of pesto.  Also, the cheese amount was great as well - letting the dish meld at the end let the cheese melt and it was extremely delicious.  The orecchiette captured bits of both the pesto and the turkey and made every bite very yummy.  Overall, a great dish with ingredients that were already available and were ready to be made into something delicious!

Join us Thursday as Tyler takes on a not-so typical breaded chicken dish.  Until then,

~Cheers!