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 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. http://www.ruthreichl.com/?ID=3&page=8#recipe
However you make pesto, hopefully you will find it's much, much better than what you find in most supermarket shelves.
bitterness comes from using food processor and/or blender. the keys is hand chopping the basil. then i use a mortar & pestle for garlic, cheese and nuts.
also, i always either roast the garlic or boil the raw cloves for a minute to remove some of the bite.
Posted by: pat rad | September 03, 2008 at 01:24 PM
Pat- any idea why the processor makes the basil bitter? I assumed it was too much fresh garlic... old pine nuts or mediocre basil.
Posted by: Josh | September 03, 2008 at 08:39 PM
Another tip: skip the salt and substitute a naturally salty Pecorino-Romano for the Parmigiano. I like to put in the least amount of garlic I can get away with as it easily ruins the delicate taste of pesto.
And, always keep an ice cube tray full of ready to serve frozen pesto. It is ingenious.
Posted by: ACD | September 06, 2008 at 09:11 AM
I just think that like many herbs, if you over-process them, they get bitter. i'm not really sure about the science. . i'm not against using the processor, it really makes things faster, i would just be careful not to over process. put the basil in last
Posted by: pat rad | September 07, 2008 at 06:20 PM