Pasta With Pesto Sauce

I've been living on this recipe for much of the week, because it's so damned nice and simple to do.

Ingredients: Pasta, Pesto sauce, mushrooms, shallots, garlic, chili, walnuts, Parmesan, black pepper.

I've used short pasta (wholewheat fusilli) but you can use any variety. The Pesto is from a jar (but I'm going to make my own someday).
I've used chestnut mushrooms as they're in season, and have more taste than "ordinary" button mushrooms.
The chili peppers are dried, but fresh are even better (de-seed and remove the pith because the heat would be too intense for this dish).
I've bought the walnuts dried and de-shelled.

Method: Start boiling the pasta and pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Peel & finely chop the shallots & garlic, & crumble the dried chilli. Chop the mushrooms into halves.

Gently fry the shallots for a few minutes in a smallish amount of oil, then throw in the mushrooms and fry for a short while- just ensure the shallots aren't overdone. Add the garlic & chili and fry a little longer- about a minute more.
Meanwhile, put the walnuts on a baking tray and bake for 6 mins.
Drain the pasta, add the pesto sauce to a large cooking pan- then mix in the pasta and the fried ingredients.
Take the walnuts out the oven, halve, and add to the pasta mix.
Serve with the Parmesan (you can grate it or slice it - I use a veg peeler to get a thin slice), and season with black pepper.

It'll take about 15 minutes to cook (including preparation).
Measurements are free & easy, depending on your own taste. This sort of dish doesn't require the sort of accuracy you'd need if you were baking a cake, say.
Cooking for one, I used half a jar of pesto, one clove garlic, one chili, about 7 walnuts, and about 60g of mushrooms (about half a supermarket packet).
Sometimes, I've doubled the amount of garlic & chili here, but I do enjoy both of them.
I've also tried adding a little splash of cider vinegar when frying the shallots, which adds another layer of flavour, as does squeezing a little fresh lime or lemon juice over the dish.
I've served this to friends and they've loved it.