A couple of weeks ago I was given the gift of a grocery bag full of garden-grown basil and I knew I was going to make homemade pesto which I had been craving for months. The plan was to freeze most of it so that I could get a blast of summer basil flavor in the middle of winter. There was so much basil that I ended up making a double batch. Since I didn’t have enough pine nuts for two batches the second batch was supplemented (by half) with walnuts to make up the difference. The following is a recipe for one batch.
Genoa Basil Pesto
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of parmesan reggiano
1/2 cup of pecorino romano
4 cloves of garlic
4 to 5 cups of basil leaves
1) Place all of the ingredients in a blender (in the order listed)
2) Blend the ingredients until a smooth consistency is reached and resembles a firm paste adding extra basil leaves by the handful if needed.
Genoa Basil Pesto
Ingredients
- 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 cup of pine nuts
- 1/2 cup of parmesan reggiano
- 1/2 cup of pecorino romano
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 4 to 5 cups of basil leaves
Directions
- Step 1 1) Place all of the ingredients in a blender (in the order listed)
- Step 2 2) Blend the ingredients until a smooth consistency is reached and resembles a firm paste adding extra basil leaves by the handful if needed.
One of my all-time favourites since my mom started growing basil in the garden 35 years ago. The recipe is perfect.
Wow, thanks Joshua. After looking at your blog I definitely take that as a compliment, and will now be nervous whenever I post anything Italian (which will be the next couple of posts). Italian food was my first love of cooking — it's how I learned fresh ingredients, and good quality ingredients really make a difference.