The holy grail of food - IMO anyways - is PESTO! Basil, extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and of course GARLIC! Do I have your interest yet? I think pesto is a highly underutilized sauce. I personally use it on fish, baked potatoes, french fries, sandwiches, mac and cheese (Oh this reminds me - I have to blog this mac and cheese!!) and of course pasta! It really makes sense for me to start here because many recipes I use have pesto in them, I make this with basil I grew in my own garden, as a family to save money! And- I JUST LOVE IT! If you buy store bought jars of pesto you’re really doing yourself a disservice, as well as spending a lot of money just to lack the true flavor and essence pesto delivers in any dish.
Around this time of year, many people have exasperated their choices on how to use the abundance of garden fresh basil. I am rather surprised that most do not know of, or even consider, making pesto. I really grow my basil for the purpose of pesto, it's that good! I certainly use my basil in other ways as well - bruschetta, on sandwiches - in bread dough. But pesto is so versatile and I find most children love it - at least all I have served it to so far! Pesto will last for about a week in the fridge if you place it in a small ball jar, just be sure to put a thick layer of oil over the top of it and have the lid tightly fastened so it doesn’t start to brown from exposure to the air, or you can cover it tightly with plastic wrap, making sure the plastic is touching the top of the pesto. Alternatively, and I recommend, you can bag portions of them in small snack size ziploc bags, with all the air pressed out, then store them inside of a gallon size FREEZER bag in your freezer. As you make pest you can just add the small bags of pesto to the other stash in the freezer, I store them for about 6 months or more!
A little history on Pesto before we jump into making the sucker. A quick hop on Wikipedia will tell you that it is sometimes spelled as pasto and the original dish pesto alla genovese is a sauce originating in Genoa, the capital city of Liguria, Italy. According to tradition, the ingredients are "crushed" or ground in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. Sorry folks - I am frugal and do enjoy putting the work in of the originals most of the time, but not that much so to be grinding individual leaves - I only have time to do that for mojitos! So I purchased this food processor as I really liked the attachment that scraped the sides, and it was cost effective as well as great for other uses - like saving money buying blocks of cheese and shredding yourself! #fruGality I use that processor often and find it to be a necessary kitchen item.
Pesto is almost always known to be served as a sauce in a pasta dish - cavatappi or angel hair are my favorites! You can also use almonds or walnuts in place of the exorbitantly expensive pine nuts. Some prefer their nuts toasted, and some prefer to add a splash of lemon juice to their pesto as well - I never added lemon juice and didn’t notice a sizable difference with toasting the nuts either. I have also used a cup of spinach substitute when I was running low on basil leaves and would certainly green-light substituting some or even all the basil with either arugula, broccoli leaves, kale, beet greens, or spinach. - Use that garden to its fullest potential! What are your favorite pesto uses? - Let me know in the comments!
PLEASE NOTE: When making a pesto pasta, you would want to reserve about a cup of the pasta water right before draining the pasta. After draining and returning the pasta to the pan, add the ROOM TEMPERATURE (not cooked) pesto to the noodles, mix then add in just enough of the water to make it a nice sauce - cooking the pesto will diminish its fresh flavor so don’t make that error!
Fresh Basil Pesto Recipe
Prep time: 15 minutes
Yield: Makes 2 cups
INGREDIENTS
4 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2/3 cup pine nuts or almonds
5 garlic cloves, minced (do not use a jar of pre chopped etc!)
salt, to taste (usually around half a teaspoon)
freshly ground black pepper to taste - usually about half the amount of salt
Directions
1. Place the basil leaves and pine nuts into the food processor and pulse until well blended.
2. Add the garlic and Parmesan cheese and pulse until well incorporated. Make sure to scrape the sides down either with the built in scraper of the processor or a rubber spatula.
3. Set the processor on the lowest setting and add the olive oil slowly, while the processor is running, will help it emulsify and help keep the olive oil from separating. Add in the salt and pepper. Occasionally stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor.
4. Store 1/2C servings into the snack ziplock bags, remove all the air and place inside a gallon freezer bag and into the freezer. Remove from the freezer and bring to room temperature before using.
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