Orzo With Walnuts & Olives

"This is a great summery dish. I sometimes add a can of white beans or tuna to the mix (well drained) for variety."
 
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Ready In:
25mins
Ingredients:
10
Serves:
4
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ingredients

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directions

  • Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook till al dente (7-8 minutes); drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking water.
  • While pasta cooks, heat a large skillet (big enough to eventually accommodate all ingredients) over medium flame. Add walnuts to the dry skillet and toast, shaking frequently, till very fragrant. Remove walnuts from skillet and set aside.
  • Add olive oil to skillet and heat over medium low flame; when hot, add garlic and tomato halves. Cook until garlic is fragrant and tomatoes have lost some of their juices. Add lemon juice and zest and cook a minute or so, stirring to incorporate. Add butter and 1/4 Celsius pasta cooking water and cook, stirring, till a loose sauce forms. Add feta and olives and stir to warm a bit.
  • Add pasta to sauce in skillet and toss to coat evenly. Serve sprinkled with fresh basil.

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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

<p><img src=http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/susied214/permanent%20collection/adoptedspring08.jpg border=0 alt=Photobucket /> <br /> <br />Hubby and I are currently living in St. Paul, MN in a great little neighborhood with tons of independent businesses. We have restaurants, natural foods coops (yes, plural!!), libraries, neighborhood movie theaters, everything is easy walking or biking distance--we love it! We enjoy biking a lot, too, and the Twin Cities have a fantastic network of bike trails, tons of things to do and see?we?ve found the perfect location! We currently live in an apartment, so our gardening attempts are limited to 3 large pots of herbs (one is all basil, the others are a mix of rosemary, tarragon, thai basil, mint, curry plant, sage, thyme, and oregano). We're saving for a house, so eventually we'll have a yard to plant more veggies in, but for now the herb pots do pretty well! <br /> <br />I enjoy cooking in my spare time (well, and my not-so-spare time, too...my hubby, who also loves to cook, accuses me of planning way-too-elaborate weeknight meals, but he never complains once he starts eating...no matter how late it is!) We are pretty adamant about eating healthy and sustainable foods. I try to make a point to source the majority of my ingredients as locally as possible, and I'm very lucky to have the wonderful St. Paul farmer's market available year round (though in the winter my choices are limited to fresh eggs, organic/free-range meat of all sorts, cheese, honey, baked goods...limited, right?...poor me!...in the summer the market is bursting with all that plus all manner of vegetables, and I've never met a vegetable there I didn't like). I also eat a good deal of wild game meat (elk, deer, antelope) because my family (who still live in MT) ship a box of hunting season bounty to us every winter. What doesn't come from the farmers market or the wild game express comes from my local natural foods co-op (St. Paul's Mississippi Market), which has a plethora of local products to choose from as well! <br /> <br />I try to eat as healthfully as possible, so if I make your recipe, I may alter it to fit my preferred diet (i.e. I'll cut down on fat, add veggies, change cuts of meat, cut down on cheese and certain condiments like mayo, etc.). I will still rate the recipe unless I pretty much don't follow it at all, in which case I'll just leave a comment with what I did--I always like to see what others have done with recipes, but I don't think it's fair to grade the recipe if I didn't actually follow it! I won?t generally make a recipe if it calls for ingredients I don?t like (and can?t sub out for something I do like), so most of my ratings are pretty high for that reason. I?ve never really understood people who try a recipe and then give it a very low rating only because they don?t like the ingredients called for. Anyhow. <br /> <br />My rating system for recipes is pretty simple. I won?t give a star rating to a recipe if I don?t follow it fairly closely. If I do give your recipe a star rating, this is what it means: <br />5 stars = fantastic flavor or unique (and tasty) &amp; the recipe worked as written?would definitely make it again <br />4 stars = good flavor &amp;/or the recipe needed only some minor changes to work?would likely make again <br />3 stars = the recipe needed a fair bit of alteration to be edible?might try it again, but would make some major changes <br />2 stars = good idea in theory, bad recipe in practice?would only try it again (with massive changes) if I?m feeling ambitious/creative <br />1 star = inedible?would not be trying it again</p>
 
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