Pesto Recipe

· by · in Food, Tutorials & Recipes. ·

Here’s my quick and easy pesto recipe.  The measurements are very approximate; experiment with the amounts until you get a ratio that you like.  It’s all about personal taste.

You will need…

  • 2/3 large handfuls of fresh basil
  • A small bag (or small handfull) of pine nuts – roughly 50g
  • Half a garlic clove
  • Roughly 50 g of parmesan cheese
  • A few glugs of oilve oil (I used ‘extra virgin’)
  • Salt and pepper

This is what to do…

  1. Fry the pine nuts in a hot pan (no oil needed) until they are light brown.  Toss them in the pan occasionally so they don’t burn.  Tip them out of the pan and set aside to cool.
  2. Using a pestle and mortar, bash up your garlic with a little salt.  You can use a blender if you prefer but I like the pestel and mortar.
  3. Add the fresh basil and bash that up too until you have a nice green mush.
  4. Add the cooled pine nuts – keep bashing!
  5. Transfer your green mush to another bowl and stir in the parmesan cheese (keep tasting it – you may not want to add it all and you could save some to sprinkle on your pasta when you serve).
  6. Add a few glugs of olive oil so your pesto as a looser texture and will coat your pasta.
  7. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve…

This amount should serve 2 – 4 people.  It won’t keep for very long so I recommend making it fresh.  Alternatively you could make it up to step 3 and freeze it; then just finish it off when you need it.

To serve, boil 100g of pasta per person (I use dried, wholemeal pasta).  Drain the water off your pasta and return it to the pan.  With the pan off the heat, add your pesto and stir.  Serve in warmed pasta bowls.  Yum!

Here are some more photos, courtesy of my iPhone…

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18 responses to “Pesto Recipe”

  1. I have substituted almonds for the pine nuts for economy. I make a large batch at the end of summer in the food processor and put it in ice cube trays and have it all winter long. A little bit of summer in the dead of winter.

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  2. Oddly enough, I have substituted walnuts, as well as pecans and hazelnuts in my pesto. Each lends a different type of nutty flavor, but all of them made the pesto great! I have a recipe that calls for pesto but it is in a creamy alfredo sauce. If you would like that recipe, let me know and I will post it here for you. It makes the alfredo sauce a light green color, but OMG! Is it wonderful!

    I pair this sauce with linguine noodles and grilled chicken breast strips. My family loves this, but the best part is that my husband can eat it. He tends to have issues with anything that has a heavy milk base. It isn’t a lactose intolerant thing, but for a long time he could not eat my normal alfredo sauce because of the cream/half and half that I make it with. This sauce he can eat and he eats a nice portion of it. This makes Linda a very happy girl because she loves alfredo sauce. 🙂

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  4. Hey Martine!
    How do you fix your blog to show the like button and the reblogging buttons at the top of your page? When I look at my blog, it only shows the following button. Try as I might, I cannot locate the place to fix this issue. When I try to link my Facebook like button to the blog, I get errors that there is an issue with the widget, but I can’t see where I would fix it. Do you have to have one of the pro upgrades to do all of this? I am thinking of doing the upgrade, but I need to have more followers before I feel justified doing it. Your help would be greatly appreciated!

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    • When you are in the back end of WordPress, go into an old post (or start a new one). Scroll right to the bottom of your screen. Are their check boxes that say ‘show likes’ and ‘show sharing buttons’? Check them to show sharing 🙂

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    • Actually I have just had a look at your site and the sharing buttons are there. I am not sure about the re-blogging; perhaps search the forums on wordpress.com?

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  5. I read the support forum for this, Martine. It said that when someone is looking at an actual post, the reblogging button will be there. It is there when I look at a post from my blog. It is not there when I am just on the main page of my blog.

    I have a new blog entry called My current project, part 2, that I would love your take on if you have a few minutes. I have better pictures than I have posted in this blog post but I cannot figure out how to add the new ones and delete the old ones.. **Sigh** I will get it one day! I started listening to your podcast last night, but I didn’t get all the way through it. I absolutely love your accent! It is so nice to listen to!

    I will definitely be listening to more of your podcasts. I wonder if they can be downloaded through ITunes. Do you know? I could add them to my IPOD and listen in my car.

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    • Ah yes – I think the ‘press this’ button is for re-blogging, so that’s right.

      Thanks for your kind comments on the podcast, that’s very sweet of you 🙂 Yes you can subscribe through iTunes – just search for iMake in the iTunes store, it’s under podcasts. There is a subscribe button and you can also download all the old episodes if you want to. If you have an iPod and can download apps then I recommend an app called Downcast (rather than using iTunes) for your podcast subscriptions. It’s great.

      To delete your photos, go into the post (to edit it) click on the image and to icons will appear in the top left hand corner (I think) of the image. Click on the one that is a red circle to delete a photo. Does that work? You can then go into the media library and delete it from there if you want to.

      Martine

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  7. My sister makes the most delicious pesto with almonds and rapeseed oil – she’s in NZ where basil just grows like mad out in her vege garden, so she can pick it and whip it up for lunch in a flash!

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