#25: Pestong Buhay Ito! (The Basic Pesto Recipe)

Ahhh... pesto. The refreshing pasta sauce that is friends with a lot of good things in the savory world. Not only is it elegant, it is also utterly easy to make, especially with a blender. I did my first pesto manually by chopping the basil and garlic until it was ultra fine. I almost feel redundant to say this but yes, our featured ingredient for this recipe is, what else? Basil!

Thanks to divinedinnerparty.com for the delicious photo

Pesto
Pawis Level: 1
Sosy Level: 4
Will feed either just two or a dozen. It really depends on the use.


Ingredients:
2 cups of basil, packed firmly
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup of chopped walnuts or pine nuts or sunflower seeds
3/4 cup of olive oil
1 tsp salt
a dash of pepper
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (sorry guys, our good ole household cheese block will not work here)


How To:
1. Place garlic in the blender and pulse around fifteen times. Then add the salt and pepper then blend it a bit with the garlic.
2. Add the leaves then pulse about ten times just to get the leaves chopped. Then add the nuts and blend. Slowly add the oil. It should take only about a minute of processing.
3. Then add the parmesan cheese and pulse for 5 more times. We are pulsing and not blending continually because we don't want something that's very smooth. We want to leave a bit of texture to the sauce.
4. Uhm... That's it? 


There really is nothing else to do, haha! You can now transfer the sauce to a jar and use it however you like! This will only keep for a week or two though as the mixture has parmesan cheese. If you want this to live longer, don't mix the parmesan until you are ready to use it.


Now wait for one of my next entries because I will introduce you to pesto's many faces. Until then!