Just a quick note - last night, almost 2 years after my cooking class in Riomaggiore, Italy, I made some pesto. A man who lives in my building had planted two of the building's window boxes with herbs, mainly basil and now it is going to seed and looking kind of bedraggled so the other night I went down and cut off a batch of the best looking pieces. (He had told people to help themselves...)
And yesterday I made pesto with it! I looked at a couple of recipes on line and they both said if you don't have pine nuts, walnuts are okay and I had walnuts.
It was an interesting experiment and it sure made me wonder how people made it using a mortar and pestle. You're supposed to have a food processor, of course, which I don't, but I figured I could make it in my mini-mincer. And that did a good job on chopping up the basil, walnuts, and garlic, but then there was no way to add the oil. I ended up dirtying the mini-mincer, my blending stick thingie and the cup that goes with it, and two small mixing bowls getting the job done.
But I also ended up with pesto and last night tried it out on half of a little demi baguette from our bakery. The first piece I put the pesto on first and then a quite thin slice of fresh tomato and toasted it. It came out kind of dry, so for the other piece, I put the tomato on first and spread the pesto around on top of that which worked better.
I'm going to try it on pasta next - think that should be quite tasty. And even though I will probably never do it again, I'm glad I at least tried it once. I've posted the ingredients I used (about a third of what the on-line recipe called for) HERE and if you have a food processor and love Italian food, I really encourage you to try it. Aside from struggling due to lack of proper equipment, it is as easy as 1,2,3!
Bon appetit!
About Me
- Mary Lynne
- West Virginia
- When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).
Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):
www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle
I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.
3 comments:
Sounds delish to me...! Maybe you just need one of those teensy electric choppers, that look like tiny food processors...
Mine's sort of like a processor but doesn't have the feed tube. And now that you mention, I've seen those tiny food processor-type ones, although even they are bigger than my mini-mincer. But it might be worth finding a spot for the kind you're talking about - would probably get more use out of it. :)
And I just noticed after I posted, I have a new follower - stvplyr - so welcome to you. Don't know if you signed on because of cooking, minis, travel, needlework...but it always makes me happy to see someone else has joined my faithful group. :)
By the way, faithful group, I've tried each time I saw a new follower to use the link to send a welcome e-mail and each time get told "sorry, we can't do that at this time". So just know I'm very happy to have ALL of my followers. :)
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