I found this recipe in a book from the 3-star Michelin French chef Alain Ducasse called Provencal cooking class. You can it download it here.
I don’t buy pesto sauce from the supermarket anymore. This sauce tastes so much better, fresher and healthier.
Here are the ingredients you will need:
- Extravirgin Olive oil as per the desired texture
- 30 g of grated parmigiano cheese
- 30 g of pine nuts
- 6 stalks of basil
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Salt
I usually remove the garlic’s germ as it is said not to be easy to digest. I also like to quickly chop the basil as the entire leaves can give a (very) hard time to your food processor, especially if you use a mini chopper. Trust me, I killed two of those little creatures.
RIP my mini chopper.
Here are the directions:
- Remove the garlic’s germs
- Chop the garlic in smaller pieces – no need to mash them
- Add the garlic to your food processor
- Add the grated parmigiano
- Add the pine nuts
- Some salt
- Add the olive oil while mixing
- Turn the food processor off when you get a smooth and creamy paste
- Quickly chop your basil
- Add a handful of basil at a time and mix
- Add as much olive oil as needed
- Transfer to a glass container with a cap and top it with some olive oil
You can keep the sauce in your fridge for up to a week.
As per the chef’s recommendation, we eat the pesto sauce with vegetables soup. My children LOVE it. I usually cook some vermicelli pasta separately and add it to my children’s servings.
I also use it instead of butter or mayonnaise/ketchup sauce. For instance, I spread some on a toasted slice of bread and top it with some slices of avocado. I also use it to make veggies hamburger.
For my younger child’s birthday party, I wanted to bake a sundried tomatoes pesto bread. As I was running out of time and was out of some ingredients, I went to my local supermarket and bought a jar from a famous brand that starts with a B…
Back home, I looked at the ingredients and felt I was kind of screwed up.
Here are the ingredients:
- Sunflower Seed Oil 46.1% -> where is the olive oil ?
- Basil 31%
- Cashew Nuts -> where are the pine nuts ?
- Natural Flavours -> does is mean the cashew nuts are tasteless ?
- Grana Padano DOP Cheese 4.6% – where is the parmigiano cheese ?
- Salt
- Pecorino Romano DOP Cheese 1.2% -> huh ?
- Sugar -> ah yes , sugar to give the sauce some taste
- Extravirgin Olive Oil 1% -> ahhhh here is the olive oil that represents only 1% in the jar
- Basil Extract -> so in addition to the cashew nuts, basil has no taste either
- Garlic
- Traces of: Eggs, other Shelled Fruit.
No further comment…
I hope you will give it a try.
