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| My little helper today |
The "foody" in me has been craving some homemade pesto for some time now. While reading my *always reliable* June edition of Southern Living I wandered across a multitude of recipes for PESTO! I was one happy girl and began dreaming of all the ways I could use this wonderful pesto......Sandwiches...pizza...pasta...bruschetta...omeletes...etc....so many possibilities!
Today is the day to celebrate the mixture of herbs and olive oil that we call Pesto.
I chose the Herb Pesto because I love mixing as many Italian herbs that I can as often as I can.
Herb Pesto
Ingredients:
2/3 cup Olive Oil
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh flat leaf parsley leaves
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts(can also use walnuts which are cheaper and easier to find!)
1/4 cup cold water
1 to 2 garlic cloves
2 Tb. fresh oregano leaves(except we couldn't find any so dried worked fine!)
1 Tb. fresh rosemary (YUM)
1 Tb. lemon juice (it didn't specify fresh, so I figured my Real Lemon would be acceptable!)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
- Get out your food processor(or blender)! My 4 cup processor was the perfect size for this recipe.
- Roughly measure out your herbs(I tend to over estimate on herbs rather than under, I figure better more flavor than too little!) and pull the leaves off of the stems as best as you can. I did not use a knife in this recipe and was VERY happy about one less thing to clean, so pulling the leaves off was fine with me!
- Use a garlic press to slightly "loosen" your garlic clove...Our cloves were HUGE so I only used one. I broke up the clove into about 4 pieces...just because :)
- Put it all in your food processor and process until smooth.
- Taste it....just because :)
- Pour into a canning jar or other container.
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| Yum! This will be going on our mozzarella and sun-dried tomato burgers tonight! <3 |
***Note***
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| Ready for the freezer! |
This recipe made 2 cups of pesto for me and after some research I have learned that fresh pesto, at best, lasts about a week in the fridge as long as it has a layer of olive oil on it. 2 cups is A LOT to use in a week, so I looked into freezing. I found out that you CAN freeze it in a canning jar OR pour into ice cube trays, freeze, and then pop cubes out into a freezer bag and freeze.....for a long time...
If you want more recipes for pesto, they also had a cilantro pesto...which we thought would be good on Mexican dishes(And yes, we will be making this later). You can check out their website:
***Also, since it's Fab Food Friday, I have to throw in there that we also tried a recipe from this April 2011 edition for Grilled Chicken Tacos with a mango salsa and blackbean side....Let me just tell you that it was taaaaasty! And also worth the makin :)
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