Secret Recipe Club Reveal: Avocado Pesto Pasta

 It is that time of the month, where I reveal the recipe I made for The Secret Recipe Reveal Day. I enjoy this day. Each month we are assigned a blog that we then choose a recipe from to share on our given reveal day. I enjoy the days leading up to it. I enjoy preparing a new recipe that came from someone else's kitchen. This month I didn't purposely wait till last minute, I had a plan, but it ended up being a bit later than I would have liked because my girls ended up being sick with a stomach bug. 

My assigned blog was "Sew You think You Can Cook", authored by the beautiful Lauren. She is an aerospace engineer, living in the Florida Panhandle, but has dreams of being a caterer..how fun does that sound?! Check out her blog for some great recipes. She loves to quilt, cook and cross stitch. I love to cook and used to cross stitch, then I had kids and haven't taken time to take it up again though I've been wanting to. 

I marked about 4 recipes from Lauren. Her Lasagna Roll Ups, her Caramel Filled Avocado Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting (still plan to make these..duh), and her Pierogi (we love Pierogi so I'd love to try them from scratch). I let my youngest daughter choose and she opted for her Roasted Shrimp and Avocado Pesto. I decided to make it with chicken since I'm really the only one who likes shrimp. I also used regular linguine noodles. 

Ingredients:

• 1 lb peeled and deveined shrimp or in our case chicken
• 8 oz brown rice noodles or regular noodles
• 2 avocados
• 1/2 C fresh basil
• juice of 2 lemons
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 C shredded asiago cheese
• salt and white pepper, to taste

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 deg.
2. Cook brown rice noodles according to package directions.
3. Place shrimp on a greased baking sheet. Season with salt, pepper, and a little squeeze of lemon. Roast for 10 minutes.
4. In a food processor combine the remaining ingredients.
5. Toss noodles and shrimp with as much avocado pesto you want.

**In the case of the chicken, I sliced it and cooked it in a skillet in oil. Season it with salt, pepper, garlic powder.

**I added a bit more basil and asiago cheese to the sauce, and a little less lemon juice. I also added some olive oil. I was nervous that I'd put too much lemon in it. In the end I think maybe I would have added more. 

This was so easy and quick, definitely something that could be made at the last minute if you keep the simple ingredients on hand. I've always shied away from homemade pesto because it seemed so expensive what with Basil and pine nuts always in the ingredients. This is an inexpensive option. 

check out more recipes from other great bloggers:

An InLinkz Link-up

With Joy UNquenchable,