Yesterday I blogged about my muse Marianne Faithfull. Today I shall talk about another muse of mine. This one is inanimate and edible. It is pesto. Let's be honest, a life without pesto wouldn't really be worth living. It is a perfect addition to a pasta dish and also makes a killer dip. Not only this soul food versatile, it is so effing easy to make. It's also FUN to make and is pretty cheap too, despite the inflating price of pine nuts (we sell them for $67.50 a kilo at Antonios! Thankfully you only need a small amount of pine nuts!
So what's not to love about pesto? In the last fortnight I have made two kinds of pesto - a traditional pesto, consisting of basil, flat leaf parsley, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and melted butter, and another kind where i replaced the parsley and pine nuts with rocket and macadamias. It's so simple you don't even need a proper recipe. You just mince everything in a blender/food processor and gradually add the olive oil and melted butter. Pesto ingredients usually have some sort of parmesan cheese in them but I find cheese difficult to puree well so I just add a generous amount of shaved Grana Padano to my pasta dish when I am ready to serve.
One of my favourite ways to have pesto is with grilled salmon and fettucine or spaghetti with roasted cherry tomatoes.
Tonight my lovely mother is showing me how to make a delicious layered vegetable lasagne with homemade pesto! I will blog the recipe on here sometime in the next few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment