Basil pesto

September 19, 2020  •  Category: ,

I have this potted basil on my balcony, here in Austin; of course, I had to make pesto. So here it is. It is hard to find an easier recipe. In Italy, people use parmesan. In Nice (France), they use it for soup but don’t bother with parmesan. At least this was what my friend Marcelle Dupuis told me, insisting that in her native Nice, the pistou is just made up of basil, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil. I ended-up making it the Niçois way, because I freeze it and it does not freeze well with cheese. Besides, I was going to use a portion of it for basil hummus.


Basil pesto

Joumana Accad Mediterranean, Middle Eastern September 19, 2020 Condiments, Main Dish, pine nuts, garlic, basil, olive oil, Italian, sauce, pesto,

4 servings

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 cups of packed basil leaves, washed and dried

1/4 cup garlic cloves (about 6, or less to taste)

1/4 cup pine nuts

3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 tsp salt (to taste)

1/4 cup parmesan (if using right away)

 

 

Instructions

  1. Place the basil in the bowl of a food processor. Add the garlic, pine nuts, and salt. Process and start drizzling the olive oil through the feed tube. Check after a few minutes and see if the texture is pasty and moist. Adjust the ingredients after tasting. If using the pesto right away, add some parmesan or other dry cheese, grated.
  2. If using for pasta, boil the pasta and add it. To get it more creamy, add a bit of the pasta cooking water to the pesto and mix. If making it to store for later, transfer it to a plastic bowl and cover the surface with a thin layer of olive oil.

Keep the flowers and seeds to replant at the next season.

Harvesting my basil leaves. This quantity (about 8 cups) gave me 3 small pesto jars to freeze.

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