Summer Field Alpine pesto, served with courgette stalk pasta, by Tommy Banks, The Black Swan at Oldstead

Tommy Banks, from The Black Swan at Oldstead, featured this recipe on Saturday Kitchen using home-grown courgette stalks and Summer Field cheese.

Serves 2

Ingredients
6 courgette stalks approx. 50cm in length
100g toasted hazelnuts or cobnuts
100g mixed fresh herbs (such as bronze fennel, lemon balm, anise hyssop, nasturtium leaves, basil)
50g Summerfield cheese, finely grated
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
50g lemon verbena leaves
50g butter
1 tbsp nasturtium flowers (optional)
1 tbsp chive flowers (optional)

Method
Place the hazelnuts and herbs in a mini food processor and blend with the rapeseed oil to make a pesto.
Remove stringy parts from courgette stalks and cut the courgette stalks into 3cm diagonal tubes to resemble pasta.
Heat 150ml of water in a saucepan over a medium heat and drop in the lemon verbena leaves.
Bring to the boil then add the courgette stalks and the butter and cook for 2 minutes.Divide the courgette stalks between 2 plates and spoon over the buttery cooking liquor.
Sprinkle over the Summer Field Alpine cheese and garnish with the flowers, if using.

This recipe is also one of the many available from Tommy Bank’s cookbook: Roots, buy here >