Every region in Italy is known its culinary specialties. Genoa is known for pesto. While living in Italy, I would go there and order it every time. Our friend Marco, is from that area and makes pesto from scratch.
While visiting my mom and dad in Hawaii, I saw some big patches of beautiful basil growing in dad’s garden so decided to make some pesto.
Here are the ingredients:
- 3 cups basil leaves (packed down)
- 1/2 cup pine nuts
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Put basil, pine nuts, garlic and olive oil into a blender or food processor and blend or pulse until smooth but still a bit chunky. Add parmesan cheese and blend lightly to mix in. Add more olive oil if needed to blend smoothly.
Cook some pasta (farfalle used in this picture above) al dente. Drain and put into a bowl. Spoon some pesto over and mix, well coating the pasta. Serve immediately and enjoy!
Unused pesto can be put into a jar with a little olive oil on top to cover. If not used within 10 days or so, you can freeze it for future use.
Some pestos use walnuts instead of pine nuts. The quality and type of parmesan (parmagiano reggiano) will make a good pesto as well as using pecorino cheese. The best pesto genovese I ever had came in a jar from Italy and it was the type of cheese used that made it really good and memorable.