I heart pesto! The delicious taste of fresh herbs, olive oil and nuts is a perfect healthy dish for any season. As a was perusing through pesto recipes, I read a very interesting blog post at www.101cookbooks.com that brilliantly explained why pesto in Italy tastes so different from most other common pesto. The secret is chopping all the ingredients by hand! So simple! Yes, it is labor intensive, but its definitely worth it. The texture and mouthfeel of little bits of herbs and flecks of pine nuts or walnuts just can't be done with a food processor or blender. I'm already an avid supporter or chopping by hand as much as possible, our grandmothers didn't have food processors, and to be honest, I find the food processor to be more trouble than their worth. All the different parts that need to cleaned afterwards is a pain in the tooshie. For soups, I opt for an immersion blender, one of my favorite kitchen tools. Anyways...back on track, pesto! The following pesto recipe has a little Asian Thelma twist by adding sesame leaves, which adds a great flavor, and I've been on a walnut kick so I use walnuts here instead of pine nuts. Hope you like it!
Ingredients:
Sweet Basil
Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
Sesame Leaves
(1 bunch of each)
Chopped Walnuts, 1/2 cup
Garlic, 3 cloves
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Lemon
Instructions:
Rinse and dry the basil, parsley, and sesame leaves. Run them through a salad spinner, if you have one, to get all the leaves as dry as possible. Chop the walnuts (you can toast the walnuts first by heating them in a pan over medium heat for about ten minutes or so) and garlic first then add a handful of herbs as you go along. All the chopping should take about 30 minutes until you get the consistency you want. Put the whole mixture in a large bowl and add olive oil, also just as much as you like. Generally you want the olive oil to cover the mixture and mix in. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon and serve immediately with any kind of pasta you want!
Below is a picture of a basil, walnut, and parmesan pesto that is always a regular in our house.
The picture above is spaghetti and the one below is mixed in with orzo.
