All Mike wanted for his birthday (back in July) was a pasta maker. Odd request, but ask and ye shall receive. I think we got it in our heads that it would be a big process to learn how to use though, so we kept putting off actually making pasta. I don’t think it helps that I’m not a big egg eater, so we don’t normally have eggs around to use in the dough.
Well, all that changed (the lack of pasta making, not my affinity for eggs) yesterday as Mike decided enough was enough and he was going to try making some noodles. We used the recipe and instructions from this TheKitchn post.
Then it was my turn to feel a bit ambitious (and maybe I wanted to continue to procrastinate studying for my upcoming exam), my mom had given me a bag of pinenuts last time I was home and Mike had bought a bunch of basil when he went to pick up the eggs for the pasta and my worn out brain thought: basil + pinenuts = PESTO!
I love pesto, and I daresay I’ve been meaning to make it longer than Mike has been meaning to make pasta. I also didn’t realize before last night that pesto is so incredibly varied, but I made some plain old basil stuff.
Very very simple pesto
Ingredients
- Basil (about 6 cups)
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 2/3 cup of pinenuts
- Salt and pepper
- Parmasen cheese
Directions
- Blanch the basil, this prevents your lovely pesto from turning brown if you don’t use it all up in one day. To blanch you just boil some very salty water, put the basil in, quickly take the basil out and then dip it in a bowl full of ice water.
- Put everything in a blender or food processor and blend until you get it the desired consistency (it depends if you want a very smooth pesto or a chunkier one.
- There is no step 3
I had no idea it was that easy. I think the most time consuming step was mincing the garlic.
