Fresh Pesto
When I’m on the road I stay at a room with a kitchenette and boil up pasta with pesto sauce. By far my favorite pesto is called Sauces ‘n’ Love, which Whole Food sells. It’s a refrigerated pesto and neither has the bitterness nor the staleness in jar pesto and other refrigerated brands. Today, though, with a bouncy castle week off the road I decided to make homemade pesto. My wife and I went to Lincoln Park’s Green City Market and bought some fresh basil from Growing Power, a favorite spot of ours and bought some Italian basil. With some pine nuts, garlic, Parmigano-Reggiano cheese, salt, pepper, and olive oil, and a blender or food processor and shazam! Pesto is done in 10 minutes. I still haven’t been able to match Sauces ‘N’ Love but believe I added too much garlic and didn’t take some stems and leaf-ends, which added bitterness. The recipe came from Ruth Reichel’s Gourmet cookbook, but I also found the online link to share.
However you make pesto, hopefully you will find it’s much, much better than what you find in most supermarket shelves.
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