And, presto! Pesto!!

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!

Pesto in Small Quantities

Here's how I made my one-time only pesto:

1 cup of basil leaves
1/4 c. grated Parmesan
1-1/2 T. walnuts (pine nuts are traditional)
1-1/2 cloves garlic (or to taste)
1/4 c. good quality olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

The idea is that you have a food processor and if you do, then you just dump in the first four ingredients and pulse until everything is very finely chopped.  Then you drizzle the olive oil in the top while the processor is running.  Add your salt and pepper, pulse again, taste and adjust any seasonings as necessary.  And, presto--pesto!

Of course, if you don't have a food processor, then you dirty your mini-mincer, find out you can't use it while adding the oil, dirty your hand-held stick blender and its cup, find out the cup is too tight a fit for mixing such a thick paste, and end up putting that thick paste in a mixing bowl, adding enough oil to make it a little soupier, and then finish off again with the stick blender! :)

But however you get it made, I encourage you to try it.  With a processor, it would take truly just minutes to make and it gives you that nice feeling of "there, I made it myself!"