What you need:
- 2 cups of fresh, densely packed basil leaves. To avoid
bitterness, you might elect to remove the stems and spines of
the leaves. Or not, all that tediousness is extra work.
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil. The fresher the better.
- 2 to 3 Tbs pine nuts. You can substitute walnuts here if you like.
- 2 to 4 fresh garlic cloves. Peeled of course.
- ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 Tbs freshly grated pecorino Romano or Sardo (In case you
were wondering, this is also known as simply Romano cheese
too.)
- 3 Tbs room-temperature butter (unsalted butter is optional)
- ½ to 1 tea sea salt. (optional, to your taste).
What you do:
- Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts and garlic cloves in your blender
or food processor and mix at high speed. Stop the blender
occasionally and scrape the ingredients.
- When everything is evenly blended, pour it into a bowl and mix in
both grated cheeses by hand. Mixing the cheeses by hand
results in a better quality finished product in my humble opinion.
However, your opinion may be different, so go ahead and throw
that cheese in there! After the cheeses have been thoroughly
mixed into your pesto, beat in the butter softened to room
temperature.
- This pesto is a little thick. If you are eating this with pasta, toss it
with a little ( one Tbs or so) extra-virgin olive oil, or some of the
hot water you used to cook your pasta ( one or two Tbs).
- This quick and easy recipe was submitted by Elaine from
Pestolovers.com . If you want to create flavorful pesto recipes at
home for yourself and your family, visit www.pestolovers.com
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