Ingredients:
Your choice of pasta 1 cup or a fistful per person
Basil, chopped 3 to 4 cups
Garlic, minced 1 tablespoon
Pine nuts, roasted 2 to 3 tablespoons
Parmesan, grated 2 to 3 tablespoons
Olive oil ½ to ¾ cup
Salt Season to taste
Pepper, white Season to taste
Extra parmesan, grated For garnish
To Prepare:
First, prepare the pesto. Roast the pine nuts a little on a stainless steel pan, just enough until you can smell that familiar roasted pine nuts smell from it. Place the basil leaves (washed and dried), garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, and olive oil in a blender and puree. Don’t forget to season the pesto with salt and pepper.
For the pasta, cook your choice of pasta until al dente. Traditionally, penne pasta is used for pesto but whatever you have around the kitchen is fine; even spaghetti.
In a pan, heat up some olive oil. If you have shallots, chop some up into fine bits and toss them into the pan; if not, that’s fine too. Heat up the pesto in the pan; 3 to 4 tablespoons are usually enough for 1 to ½ cup of pasta. Toss the pasta until it’s completely covered by the pesto.
Here’s the trick to great pesto pasta. Remove the pesto from the pan and place in a bowl. Allow it to cool a little before adding in the extra parmesan or some feta. Don’t toss the cheese in while it is still in the pan because that would result in clumpy, ungainly pasta (something I learned from an Italian housewife).
This is a basic pesto recipe but you can easily jazz it up with some chopped sun-dried tomatoes (added in after the shallots) or other ingredients you’ve got lying around. You can also use pesto as a sauce for roasted tomatoes, a spread for toast, or even as an ingredient for risotto (in small amounts).
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