Basil pesto

I’ve been making basil pesto for sometime. I didnt try basil pesto for years and was always fond of red pasta sauce but once I tried pesto pasta salad at M&S, I just loved it and since then my love for pesto has just increased.

I started making pesto sauce few years ago and I remember seeing the recipe in Ritu Dalmia travel book – that’s one of my favorite cook book because it covers many cuisines around the world in a very interesting way.

The recipe is simple, like in India we make ‘chutney’, just that I don’t mince it too much. I’ve mostly, infact 90% of the time, used mortar and pestle but now I make in food processor.

Recipe requires basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic and sLot of people replace pinenut with walnut but I dont. The taste that you get with pinenut is much much better than what you get with walnut, walnut tends to bitter the pesto. I prefer not to even use  parmesan cheese in pesto sauce as I just love green color of basil in the pasta. The little coarsely grinded basil pesto perfectly blends with the each pasta when mixed and infuse its distinct flavor!

|Ingredients|

▪ 2 cups basil
▪ 1/2 – 2/3 cup olive oil
▪ 5-6 garlic cloves
▪ 5 teaspoon pine nuts
▪ Salt to taste

|Method|

▪ In a food processor coarsely grind basil, garlic cloves and pine nuts.
▪ Add olive oil little by little and mix well with basil, garlic and pine nuts.
▪ Leave when mixed and don’t make a fine paste, the coarse texture tastes great.
▪ Add salt to taste.

Basil pesto is ready with a a nice green color to make your taste buds alive. Use it as pasta sauce, sandwich spread or pizza base sauce – the way you want!

Enjoy! ♡