Simple basil pesto - quick, simple and clean

This recipe is reposted from my original blog post

Notes This has always been a firm favourite with both me and my kids. It’s quick (you can make a batch in the time it takes to cook spaghetti), easy and made from the simplest of ingredients. Once you’ve made your own pesto you’ll never want to buy the gloop they sell in jars again.

As well as a simple pasta dish, you can use pesto to add flavour to tomato sauces, as a pizza topping and as an ingredient in butternut squash lasagne

I have been known to add some spinach leaves in place of basil as a way of getting more green veg into my kids. #SneakyDad

It’s possible to make pesto using a pestle and mortar, but it’s way way easier to use a food processor – so if you have one, dig it out.

Ingredients

• 60 g roasted pine kernels You can dry roast pine nuts by putting them in a frying pan on the heat and moving them around until they start to turn brown

• 60 g grated parmesan cheese

• 60 g fresh basil leaves Wash and dry the leaves in a salad spinner if you have one

• 1 garlic clove

• 1 sqeeze fresh lemon juice optional, but helps stop the pesto from turning brown in the fridge after a few days

• 100 mls olive oil virgin

Method

1. Put your spaghetti on to cook, following the instructions on the packet.

2. Start by crushing the garlic and putting it with the pine nuts into the food processor. Pulse contents a few times to reduce the pine nuts to little bits. No so much that it turns them in to paste though.

3. Add the leaves and a big glug of olive oil. Pulse again until all the leaves are turned into green deliciousness.

4. Add the grated cheese and some more oil and pulse again, adding more oil until the desired consistency is reached (you may want a very liquid pesto for drizzling for example).Add a squeeze of lemon juice and season if required. Pulse a couple more times to mix everything up.

5. Drain the pasta and put it back in the pan, then stir through a couple of spoons of pesto.Any unused pesto can be stored in the fridge for a week. Pouring a little olive oil over the pesto in it's container can help it stay fresh looking.

submitted by /u/kurt206
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