Pesto Orecchiette with Chicken Sausage, peas, and grape tomatoes

Our friend Val was staying with us last week while she took the NY AND the NJ bar exams. Bleh! So I told her I'd cook dinner on Tues night so she could hang out and relax and unwind before her big, awful test.

I decided to make a pesto orecchiette because we have these great big planters of herbs on our roofdeck (the co-op maintains them, thankfully!!) and wanted to use all the fresh basil that we have at our disposal.
So I made a pesto, which was too olive oil-y and garlic-y for my taste. So instead of sharing that recipe, I'll share my favorite pesto recipe that I've made a different time.

Just throw all of the following into a food processor:
1.5 cups baby spinach
3/4 - 1 cup basil leaves
1/2 c toasted pine nuts, but I used walnuts for this recipe, which gave a great, nutty flavor to the pasta dish
2-3 cloves of garlic (depending on the size)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3/4 tsp salt
1 TB lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2 c EVOO

This recipe will show up much greener than the pic I have below! But here was my garlic-y version:

Then for the main event, I used:
1 package of andouille chicken sausage (4 links)
3/4 cup frozen sweet peas
1 cup cup of halved grape tomatoes
1 small package of orecchiette pasta

First I put on a pot of salted water for the pasta and let it cook while I did the rest. I heated some EVOO up in my cast iron pan and added chicken sausage (I took the casings off and sliced) until it browned up.  When it was getting close to browned, I added the frozen peas and grape tomatoes and cooked until the peas looked done (maybe 5 min for the sausage and another 3 min post adding the vegetables, but it depends on how hot your stove is.) I did the sausage on high heat and turned it down a bit (Med High) for the veggies. This is what it looks like when the peas are still frozen!

Once they were done, I drained the pasta (reserving some of the pasta water) and set it aside.  I added about 3/4 cup - 1 cup of the pesto sauce to the vegetables and just heated it slightly over low heat until everything was coated.  Then I added the pasta directly to the cast iron skillet and stirred all together. I didn't need to use any of the reserved pasta water because my pesto was pretty thin, but the recipe I provided above is thicker, so you may need to add a few TBs of the water to ensure you can get the pesto to coat all the pasta.

And that's it! Hubby said it was a 9, but the andouille was a little spicy for me and I didn't love the pesto I made, so I gave it a 7.  I bet it would be delicious with the pesto above and sweet Italian sausage.
Enjoy!