Good morning. It's mild and sunny today and if feels as if Spring might not be so far away. I made pesto last night. Basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan and olive oil. We actually had all those ingredients either in the fridge or on the kitchen windowsill and so it was destined to be pasta pesto for tea.
Broken mugs make useful pots for supermarket herbs. I don't have a very good record with these mugs. Maybe I should stop letting Angus help me empty the dishwasher.
I didn't really follow a recipe, just threw what we had into the blender. I think it needed more basil. If anyone has a tried and tested pesto recipe I would love to hear it. We had it on the rest of the fancy pasta left over from the weekend and it was good. I took a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from pouring it into the jam jar. I do love filling a jam jar with something I've made. Roll on summer fruits season and jam making!
Ahhh spirng...here's hoping! I'll check my River cafe cook book for a pesto recipe for you. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's quite mild here today but a bit grey. I've never tried making my own pesto because I'm not convinced it's any cheaper than shop bought stuff, although I'm sure it must be tastier. Pine nuts are so pricey and you need so much basil too.
ReplyDeleteI also make my own pesto and although I agree with Anna, I don't think it's cheaper than what you can buy, the taste is miles ahead. I use Delia Smith's recipe as a starting point ie 2oz basil leaves, 1 clove of garlic crushed with some sea salt, 1 tbsp of pine kernels which I might toast or might not, 1 oz grated Parmesan cheese and quite a bit of a good green, extra-virgin olive oil to get the right consistency. More than you think you might need. I say I use Delia's recipe as a starting point because I make sure the scales tip over the 2oz mark and generally use more. My best tip is not to do with the recipe so much as the growing of the basil. I grew a whole forest last year in large pots in the greenhouse. They need concentrated sunshine and the pots I left outside failed to thrive until brought in under the glass. I overplanted really but we eat a lot of basil and I made the last of 5 double batches of pesto at the beginning of November so it lasted really well. I have a fantastic recipe for homemade pesto rolls - will post on my new blog perhaps. Like you, I think, I have just started a blog in January. Happy pesto-making!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea to recycle chiped tea mugs! Your row of herb pots looks great.
ReplyDeleteI love pesto as well and am looking forward for wild garlic season - our wild garlic pesto recipe is a favourite among the whole family, I will write down the recipe on our blog within the next weeks. Besides basil pesto we also like to make parsley pesto - a yummy way for extra vitamines (especially during these cold days - in Salzburg today we had -8 and it will get colder in the next days).
In summer we grow our own basil, we are having normal basil, red basil... I grow the herbs on the balcony, so they are no over-exposed to rain and wind, but get all the sunshine available, and they are protected by the warmth of the house. By the way, a really tough parsley plant is still growing on my balcony.
It is so much nicer to have your own pesto with hight quality ingredienst and no-extra stuff. And it is so quick to make. And not only the taste is better, I love the smell of freshly cut or grounded herbs.
Thank you for all your lovely feedback and ideas for pesto...i am intrigued by parsley pesto!
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