Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Basil

From Saturday's Farmers Market basil, I decided to make pesto. Here for the record is the recipe I found, with my changes.

Basil-Walnut Pesto
3-4 oz. parmesan and romano cheese (or all parmesan)
1 basket of basil (as depicted)
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled & cut up

Clean basil and remove stems and any wilted or blackened leaves.

In food processor, using the metal blade, grind up the cheese and set aside. Put the walnuts & garlic in the bowl (with a pinch of salt and black finely ground pepper) and pulse until finely chopped. Add basil and pulse once or twice, then add oil in a stream, finally cheese.

Meanwhile, boil 1 lb of linguini according to package directions. (I only used 1/2 lb. but it should have been a pound). Use around 1 tb. of the pasta water to rinse the oil from the measuring cup, and pour this into the pesto. When pasta is done, put it into a serving dish and scrape the pesto onto the pasta and toss.

I served it with a few Trader Joe's black olives and tomato slices from the Farmers Market.

1 comment:

Jeanie said...

Hi, Mae!

This looks fabulous! My basil crop is in full gear and I'm ready for pesto. (Unfortunately my food processor bowl lost a part and now the whole thing won't go -- so it's back to the blender; slower, but ultimately as effective!)

Thanks for visiting my blog and your comments. I'll take a look at the background. The polka dots were hard to read, I agree, though I thought the new one (mostly beige except at the edges) would be different. Interesting. I wonder if plays differently on different monitors and browsers; I'll have to check it out.