Homemade pesto trial number one was last night. My dear friend Brynne was visiting and I thought it would be fun to make dinner on Sunday night together. Total dork I am I asked for a small food processor for the holidays and I've been dying to try to make some fresh pesto. I decided to use Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa's recipe. It called for pine nuts and walnuts mixed but I chose to do all walnuts since pine nuts are so darn expensive! At least I can snack on the extra walnuts.
Reading the recipe, I was surprised to see it calling for nine cloves of garlic! That sounded insane so I peeled only six. I couldn't really tell if I had as much basil as the recipe required, so I decided I'd just eyeball everything and change it to taste. I started with four cloves, all the basil, and a good handful of cheese and walnuts. I also admit cheating with the crappy canned Parmesan cheese that I already had to save some money! That's kind of an Italian food sin but...oh well. I tasted-tested a few times, adding some salt or cheese or walnuts or oil. Thank goodness I didn't just throw in all of the garlic because the pesto was extremely garlicky with what I put in initially. I asked Brynne if she liked garlic, because if she didn't we were in big trouble!
Brynne made us up a salad of baby greens, dried cranberries, feta cheese, and some of the spare walnuts. I quickly mixed up a lemon vinaigrette. I've completely stopped buying jarred salad dressings. I can make something ten times healthier and just as good in two minutes with some lemons or some red wine vinegar. I then tossed the pesto with some penne pasta and some frozen peas that I didn't even need to defrost - they heated up in the pasta pot. The pesto was a real treat. It's amazing how much more flavorful it is made fresh. The basil's crisp sweetness shines through and the garlic is even better when the heat of the pasta cooks it a bit and makes it fragrant. I have about half of it left and am freezing it for another super-fast dinner soon!
Here's the recipe (just use the pesto part below): http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/pesto-pea-salad-recipe/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment