Playing with Pesto

Pesto -- that lovely mixture of basil, olive oil, nuts and garlic -- is something I have wanted to play with in the kitchen for some time.

I very much enjoy pesto, but rarely eat it. It wasn't until I tasted it on a pizza a couple nights ago that I decided I would cook it into a dish of some sort.

Pesto has such a wonderful, aromatic and powerful flavor. And considering I have never used pesto for anything other than, say, dipping, I wasn't sure where to begin.

So I decided on the other foods first, then tried to figure out how to incorporate the sauce. I knew I wanted to prepare lamb with a fine toast of bread, but what else?

Pasta? Why not?

I had never had pesto on pasta before, though I understand this is fairly common. This is what I opted to do:

We already had some pesto in the fridge. I melted some butter and chives into the pesto and, after having cooked the pasta, stirred the sauce into the noodles and added some of the starchy water from the noodles. I also -- and don't chuckle -- sauteed some bacon bits and included this in the mix along with some walnuts that I put through the food processor and some Parmesan cheese.

I made a rub for the lamb -- cinnamon, brown sugar, salt, paprika, cumin and garlic salt with a smattering of olive oil. I grilled this for less than 10 minutes. I should have removed some of the rub and oil because it charred the meat to the point that I had to scrap off the darkened bits (*embarrassing*) before pan searing the chops a little bit.

And a salad was a must. Quite simply it included lettuce, tomatoes, baby dill, corn, red vinegar and olive oil with a little bit of salt.

Well, not bad.