Red pesto with fettacine with chilli garlic scallops

The first time i ever had my own jar of pesto, was when i went to the 2009 good food & wine show, and got a free showbag full of goodies. Lots of samples of food like pasta sauce, honey packets, rice, drinks and snacks of all sorts, there was a jar of red pesto. I had no idea pesto came in red (i always assumed it was the green stuff) and i had never tried it before.

I was visiting a friend after the show, going through all the goodies i had bought on the day, and realised i was really hungry, so he brought me a bowl of rice and i was curious to try the pesto ..

Yeah, a few people think its a bit odd that i had pesto sauce with rice, but it was seriously addicted & yummy! AFter that, i had a bit of an obsession and had it atleast 3 times a week.. with chopped cucumber, tomato, whatever fresh veggies i had in the fridge.

I did however get sick of this.. (its a vicious cycle of addiction and then having it to much i cant stand it anymore, it's happened with quite a few foods..). For about 6 mths i didnt have any pesto, until i came across this link, and i wanted to try it out.

Oh & yup i'm no longer fully vegetarian, i eat scallops and oysters because they have no face, so technically speaking, i'm a pesketarian again.

This is my preferred brand for tomato pesto, i've tried other brands but.. this one is the creamiest and most flavoursome one.

All i did was (sorry this isnt a proper recipe but i did sorta just make it up based on what ingredients i had at home)

some garlic

some olive oil

some scallops

make sure the oil is well heated (otherwise the scallops will release a lot of water)

and pan fry the garlic until fragrant, then add the scallops

so with scallops, to get that stripy grilled effect you need a cast iron griddle thing which i didn't have, and a really high heat stove. Mine wasn't heating it enough so i ended up draining the scallops of all the water that came out of them..

after, you get some pasta from the cold section at the shops, this is the fresh packet pasta that is already cooked so it doesn't take long to cook in boiling water, only about 5 minutes or so.

When that's done, stir through pesto (which is better if you preheat in a pan first), top with scallops, decorate with halved cherry tomatoes, and sprinkle with grated parmesan.

A fairly quick meal to get together, i found it a lil dry though, possibly because... i'm not sure. Its definitely not the creamiest pasta i've had, but the pesto is really strong so maybe extra pieces of avocado would help!