Peter Pipers Pickled Pesto
Ok, it’s not pickled, I’m not Peter, but it IS Pesto. I adore pesto. It’s simple, it’s easy to make and easy to use whenever you want a quick meal. To be honest I like pesto out of a jar, but there’s something about making your own pesto (like mayonaise) that just feels right.
Ingredients
- Pine nuts (100g)
- Grated Parmesan
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Basil
- Olive oil
- Lemon Juice
- Salt and pepper
Honestly I can’t remember the exact quantities of each item, but Pesto is one of those things that even I can get right, using just my eyes, taste and better judgement, oh and of course the MCC’s best kitchen power tool – the blender.
Get ye olde blender our of the cupboard, clean off dust and plug in. Add the garlic to the blender bowl and whizz it up. After a second or two, get a spatula type thing and scrape aroound the edges of the bowl, just to make sure that the garlic doesn’t get stuck.
Add in the pine nuts, whizz up again for a few seconds, power down and scrape the edges and the bottom again, and then power up for another few seconds. Pour in 5 seconds of the oil, power up, scrape sides, etc.
Add the basil and lemon, whizz, mix by hand, add more oil, whizz, add Parmesan and a few pinches of salt. Whizz up again. If you feel that the consistancy isn’t liquid enough, add some more oil and whizz up again.
You should be left with a consistancy like above, that will last you about a week, enough for an evening meal with spaghetti and maybe a lunchtime on french bread…
For a pasta sauce that’s so easy it’s almost not even cooking:
Sweat some crushed garlic in olive oil. Add a little bit of butter. Pour over cooked pasta and sprinkle with cheese (your choice; parmesan is good but I prefer a blend of parmesan, mozerella, and provelone).
Yum.
Julie, remember that to us – all cooking is errr, cooking. So with that in mind what exactly does “sweat some crushed garlic” actually mean.
When we say we’re learning to cook from scratch, we mean it.
Sweat… heat at a very low temperature for a decent amount of time – five or ten minutes. LOW heat. If it turns brown or sizzles, you’re sauteeing. Sweating is for softening up veggies, making them turn clear (in the case of onions and garlic and shallots, etc), and bringing out the flavor. A little salt can help the process.
And to crush garlic, you peel it first and them smash it. You can lay it on the counter and whack it with a pan if you like. I usually run it through a garlic press.
Garlic is a small white bulb plant, related to onions, that you can find in the produce department. Teehee.
Green is such a healing colour, or is it purple? I must get my colours read again. Julie, when you say counter, is that, like, American for table?
Looks Tony the Tiger Grrrrrrrrrreat by the way Mark…
Counter. Like the kitchen counter. The flat surfaces upon which you work in the kitchen. The thing holding up your blender.
Ah yes, America and England, two nations separated by a common language. Haha.