Pesto sauce gets its name from the word “to crush”, “to trample”. This sauce is served everywhere in Italian restaurants and cafes. Pesto goes well with fish and meat dishes, side dishes and even desserts. The interesting green color looks good on a plate; it is spread on bread toast and added to pizza. For this reason, many people are interested in the technology of making pesto, which we will talk about today.
Classic pesto
- garlic cloves - 2 pcs.
- fresh basil - 1 bunch
- pine nut - 45-50 gr.
- Parmesan - 50 gr.
- olive oil - 90 ml.
- lemon juice - 25 ml.
- Start preparing your food. First, peel the garlic cloves and run them through a press. Wash the greens and chop them. Grind the cheese with a grater and combine with garlic. Add basil, immerse ingredients in a mortar.
- You can use a blender or food processor if you prefer, but making pesto with a mortar is easier than ever. Add olive oil and continue grinding.
- You should get a paste of uniform consistency. Season the contents with salt, pour in lemon juice and cool the sauce in the refrigerator.
- Pesto goes well with almost all dishes or garlic croutons. If you cannot consume the entire portion at once, simply freeze the sauce or refrigerate it in a glass jar.
Pesto with arugula
- Parmesan cheese - 45 gr.
- fresh arugula - 0.1 kg.
- olive oil - 0.1 l.
- garlic clove - 3 pcs.
- walnut - 45 gr.
- Remove the stems from the arugula, rinse under the tap and leave to dry on towels. Chop the leaves finely and fry the walnuts in a frying pan without oil in advance.
- Peel the garlic and pass through a crusher. Grind the nuts into crumbs, mix with arugula and other ingredients. Pour in the oil, add grated cheese.
- Season with pepper and salt to your taste, then transfer to a mortar (blender, meat grinder, food processor). Achieve homogeneity from the components. Serve with crackers or croutons.
Creamy pesto sauce
- olive oil - 65 ml.
- fresh basil - 15-20 gr.
- pine nuts - 30 gr.
- Parmesan cheese - 45 gr.
- butter - 25 gr.
- garlic cloves - 2 pcs.
- heavy cream - 110 ml.
- Wash the basil and let it dry. Cut the garlic into slices, chop the nuts, grate the cheese. Place the ingredients in a blender bowl and blend until blended.
- Add salt to your taste, add ground pepper (chili, if desired). Add softened butter and mix again. Combine olives with cream and butter until smooth.
- Pesto sauce is best served at room temperature. But fans prefer to cool it in advance and then combine it with pasta or mushroom dishes.
Pesto with mozzarella cheese
- Parmesan cheese - 40 gr.
- Mozzarella cheese - 40 gr.
- fresh tomato - 90 gr.
- olive oil - 0.1 l.
- fresh basil - 50 gr.
- garlic cloves - 2 pcs.
- Wash the tomatoes, free them from inedible parts. Chop into cubes or circles. If the peel is thick, remove it. Grate the Parmesan and finely chop the mozzarella.
- Rinse the basil and dry on towels until the moisture disappears. Remove the husks from the garlic and pass through a crusher. Combine all recipe ingredients except tomatoes.
- Season the pesto with salt and ground pepper. Then beat well with a blender until smooth. Add tomatoes and serve with your favorite main dishes.
Pesto with vinegar and nuts
- table vinegar (6%) - 20 ml.
- hard cheese - 40 gr.
- soft cheese - 90 gr.
- Cherry tomatoes - 6 pcs.
- basil - 20 gr.
- garlic cloves - 3 pcs.
- nuts (almonds, cedar or walnuts) - 50 gr.
- olive oil - 120 ml.
- Immerse the soft cheese in a blender bowl, and pass the hard cheese through a grater and mix with the first component. Rinse and dry the basil in advance, and add it to a common bowl.
- Pass the garlic through a press, fry the nuts in a dry frying pan and place in a blender bowl. Pour in olive oil, pepper, add salt to your taste.
- Combine all ingredients with vinegar. Process until it becomes a paste. Wash the tomatoes, dry them, cut them into 2 parts and combine with pesto. Serve the sauce over pasta with mushrooms or chicken.
- basil - 55 gr.
- parmesan - 60 gr.
- pine nuts - 50 gr.
- olive oil - 125 ml.
- garlic - 3 cloves
- Rinse the basil bunch thoroughly under running water, shake off and pat dry with a paper towel to remove excess moisture. Peel the garlic and chop into large pieces. Grate the cheese on a fine grater.
- Place all available ingredients in a blender bowl and turn the products into a homogeneous mass. If you want to get a more airy composition, beat the homogeneous mass with a mixer. You can use the amount of ingredients to suit your taste.
Pesto with Parmesan
- fresh tomatoes - 240 gr.
- pine nuts - 25 gr.
- basil - 30 gr.
- ricotta cheese - 75 gr.
- olive oil - 35 ml.
- parmesan - 40 gr.
- freshly ground pepper - 3 gr.
- garlic - 2 cloves
- It doesn’t take much time to prepare a fragrant sauce with a unique taste. In addition, the product will be quite low in calories. 100 grams of the composition will contain only 145 Kcal.
- Wash the tomatoes thoroughly. Next, chop them into small slices and place them in a hot, dry frying pan. Dry the vegetables a little, getting rid of excess moisture. At the same time, grate the cheeses on a fine grater. Wash the basil and peel the garlic.
- Place all ingredients in the recipe into a food processor. Turn on the household appliance and wait until the products turn into a paste-like consistency. The finished sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 days.
Salad with pesto
- corn salad - 120 gr.
- cedar nuts - 65 gr.
- fruit balsamic vinegar - 45 ml.
- beets - 3 pcs.
- goat cheese - 210 gr.
- basil - 25 gr.
- parmesan - 60 gr.
- garlic - 3 cloves
- olive oil - 130 ml.
- Wash the root vegetables and cook until fully cooked. After this, cool the beets and chop them into slices. Place washed basil, half the mass of nuts, olive oil, garlic and grated Parmesan cheese, and salt into a blender bowl.
- Place chopped beets on a platter and place goat cheese on the root vegetable. Add salt to taste, sprinkle with balsamic vinegar, sprinkle with remaining pine nuts. Serve the finished sauce in a separate bowl.
- It is recommended to serve the salad warm in portions. To obtain a more unique taste, beets can be baked in the oven at a temperature of 190 degrees. Also, celery and lemon juice will not go amiss with the dish.
Spaghetti with pesto
- filtered water - 1.4 l.
- parsley - 40 gr.
- spaghetti - 600 gr.
- basil - 60 gr.
- parmesan - 80 gr.
- garlic - 4 cloves
- cedar nuts - 45 gr.
- olive oil - 120 ml.
- Place a pot of water on the stove and wait for it to boil. Don't forget to add salt depending on your taste preferences. After the first bubbles appear, place the spaghetti in the container. Boil pasta for 8 minutes.
- After boiling, place the spaghetti in a colander and wait until the liquid has completely drained. At the same time, start preparing the sauce. Clean and prepare all components as usual. Place ingredients in food processor.
- Get a smooth sauce. If necessary, add olive oil to the mixture. The mass should drain from the spatula. Place the dish on a plate in a heap, pouring sauce on top. Decorate the spaghetti with sprigs of herbs.
- When purchasing fresh basil, you should know that only green leaves must be added to the classic sauce recipe.
- To prepare a unique sauce in terms of taste and aroma, you need to determine the proportions yourself. You can add various aromatic herbs and nuts to pesto.
- It is imperative to use extra virgin olive oil when preparing the sauce. The finished pesto should be stored in a sealed glass container.
Pesto is a true Italian sauce. In this country, it is preferably served with pasta or eaten with crackers or croutons. To immerse yourself in sunny Italy for a moment and delight your guests, prepare pesto using the chosen technology. Feel free to add your favorite ingredients to create a unique recipe.
Video: recipe for Italian pesto sauce
What can they do, these pasta makers: pizza and pasta? Let's object! The Italians can be constantly praised, if only for the fact that they invented the most delicious, and therefore: pesto. This subtle, savory addition will give even the simplest dish a charming Mediterranean twist.
taste and unforgettable aroma.
Pesto traditions
It is absolutely certain that the classic pesto recipe is over 200 years old. The famous sauce of Ligurian cuisine is prepared on the basis of olive oil, basil, pine nuts and hard cheese. Other ingredients may vary, which we will definitely talk about next. But there is one point worth considering if you want to prepare everything according to the rules - according to a long-standing Italian tradition, pesto is prepared using a marble mortar and a wooden pestle - no less. By the way, the verb pestare in Italian means “to trample, grind, crush” (compare with Russian pestle), hence the name “pesto”. But if time is valuable to you, you can use a blender or mixer.
Classics and improvisation
Considered a classic pesto, Pesto alla genovese (Genoese pesto) is made from basil grown in the vicinity of Genoa, salt, pine seeds, garlic, extra virgin Ligurian olive oil and hard sheep cheese. But this, of course, is not the only pesto recipe found in Italy. For example, in Sicily they prepare Pesto alla siciliana - without nuts, but with tomatoes. And in the Bay of Naples area they prefer Pesto alla trapanese - with sun-dried tomatoes and almonds, but without cheese.
Pesto can also be made with walnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, arugula, spinach, dill or mint... So don't be afraid to deviate from tradition! first spin.
What do you eat it with?
Any pesto goes perfectly with a wide variety of Italian pasta and ravioli. Try! Pesto magically transforms a completely ordinary side dish into a delicious stand-alone dish: you can serve rice and steamed vegetable mixtures with it.
It is also worth baking fish with pesto sauce; for this, Italians most often use cod and salmon - it will turn out very tasty.
Cod with pesto sauce.
Make pesto with arugula and purple basil. Take 500 g cod fillet. Lightly grease a baking dish with vegetable oil. Season one side of the fillet with salt and pepper, then place in the pan. Brush the top side with pesto sauce. Place the pan in an oven preheated to 200°C. After 15 minutes the fish is ready.
In pesto sauce, meat chops or turkey. Meat or poultry baked in the oven in foil can easily be the main dish on the holiday table! Grilled lamb will be tender and juicy if you coat it with pesto before cooking. And the dried pork underneath will sparkle with new shades of taste.
As for vegetables, the sauce goes best with eggplant and bell pepper, especially if it is pesto with tomatoes. Another traditional Italian delicacy that requires pesto is a multi-layer vegetable pie, each layer of which is smeared with a magic sauce.
Vegetable pie with pesto. Take classic pesto sauce, 1 red onion, a glass of green peas, 2 carrots, 1 zucchini, 50 g parmesan and 400 g ready-made puff pastry. Cut the zucchini into semicircles, the onion into half rings, and the carrots into circles. Roll out the dough into a layer 3 mm thick. Prick it frequently with a fork. Layer the vegetables, brushing each one with pesto. Sprinkle the top layer with grated cheese and bake in an oven preheated to 190°C for 20 minutes.
Pesto is often used in canapes, sandwiches and sandwich cakes, as well as on pizza with tomatoes, ham and cheese. Risotto with spinach, warm salad with seafood - all this would not be so tasty without pesto. In Italy they even put it in soups!
You can also simply spread pesto on a slice of fresh bread. But before you try, enjoy the spicy aroma coming from such a sandwich, that's part of the fun too!
You are already convinced that there are a huge number of pesto recipes. Be sure to try them all to choose your favorite.
It is believed that pesto has been known since the times of the Roman Empire, but the first documentary evidence of the preparation of this sauce dates back to 1865.
With its sauce, it even organized a world championship in the preparation of Genoese pesto! It is interesting that amateur cooks take part in this competition along with professional chefs.
In different countries of the world there are tasty, but rather strange analogues of Italian pesto. For example, in French Provence they prepare pistou sauce, which usually does not contain nuts. In Austria they love pesto made from pumpkin seeds, and in Germany they use wild garlic instead of basil.
Italians always include pesto in their wedding menu, because pesto is not only a symbol of a rich table, but also simply a good sign for the newlyweds!
Green pesto
Ingredients
Basil – 60 g
Grated sheep cheese – 2 tbsp. spoons
Garlic – 2 cloves
Olive oil – 100 ml
Salt - to taste
In a blender or using a marble mortar, grind pine nuts (or pine seeds), garlic, and cheese.
Add salt and gradually dilute the resulting mass with cold-pressed olive oil to the consistency of sour cream.
Green pesto is considered classic. It is ideal for all types of pasta, minestrone or risotto. Green pesto better than others emphasizes the taste of caprese - a classic Italian appetizer made from mozzarella and tomatoes.
Red pesto
Ingredients
Basil – 20 g
Pine seeds or pine nuts - 3 tbsp. spoons
Garlic – 2 cloves
Grated Parmesan – 3 tbsp. spoons
Sun-dried tomatoes – 100 g
Capers – 1 tbsp. spoon
Balsamic vinegar – 1 tbsp. spoon
Olive oil – 100 ml
Salt - to taste
In a blender (at low speed), grind the basil, pine nuts or pine seeds, garlic, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Add capers and balsamic vinegar. Thin with olive oil to desired consistency.
Red sauce is great not only for pasta, but also for delicate creamy cheeses. It perfectly complements the taste of meat cooked on coals, as well as baked vegetables, especially eggplants.
Yellow pesto
Ingredients
Basil – 20 g
Pine seeds or pine nuts - 3 tbsp. spoons
Chopped walnuts – 1 tbsp. spoon
Garlic – 2 cloves
Grated Parmesan – 3 tbsp. spoons
Ricotta – 150 g
Olive oil – 100 ml
Salt - to taste
Grind basil, pine seeds, walnuts, cheese, ricotta in a blender, add salt and olive oil.
Yellow sauce adds a unique taste to vegetable soups (pumpkin, carrot, sesame and ginger), and is absolutely irreplaceable in the recipe for the famous avocado cream soup.
Purple pesto
Ingredients
Rucola – 100 g
Purple basil – 2 sprigs
Pine nuts – 2 tbsp. spoons
Garlic – 1 clove
Olive oil – 1 tbsp. spoon
Melted butter – 1 tbsp. spoon
Salt - to taste
Grind the arugula, basil and garlic in a blender. With the blender running, pour in the olive oil. Add melted butter, stir and sprinkle with pine nuts.
Purple sauce goes well with fish and seafood. Even ordinary potatoes baked with pesto will become unusual. It is also used in making baked mushrooms with spinach.
Already in the very name of the famous Italian sauce “pesto” there is a definition of the method of its preparation: pestato translated from Italian - trample, grind, crush. To prepare it you need a mortar and pestle, preferably stone ones. Copper and wood can add unwanted shades to the taste and aroma of the sauce. If you want to get real pesto, then give up blenders, mixers and grinders - they will never lead to the desired result.
The classic composition of pesto sauce was determined a long time ago; naturally, it includes products that are available in Italy, but are not always available for sale here in Russia.
To make real pesto, Parmesan cheese and olive oil are the base. As an addition: nuts - garlic seeds, coarse sea salt. There is no exact recipe for the sauce - it is prepared on a whim, by trial and error (but better without mistakes). They begin to grind the basil leaves with salt; it is its large crystals that contribute to effective grinding and juice release. Olive oil is added little by little, the ingredients are introduced gradually.
This simple pesto sauce can be prepared in five minutes and served with regular pasta, boiled fish or meat. Its taste and aroma will decorate any, even the simplest dish.
If a not very experienced cook takes on the preparation of pesto, then it is more advisable to have on hand the exact composition of the products, without analogues or substitutes, and their proportions.
To call it classic, we need two bunches of green basil, 100 grams of Parmesan cheese, at least half a glass of olive oil, two cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of peeled nuts.
Wash and dry the basil greens, put them in a mortar and, adding salt little by little, begin to grind the leaves in a circular motion so that a paste is obtained. Add chopped garlic and whole nuts in small portions. At the very end, add finely grated cheese and olive oil. The finished, properly prepared sauce is a homogeneous, silky green mass with a fairly thick consistency. It is added to soups and sandwiches are made with it. The sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for several days, and well packaged in the freezer for a month without losing its taste.
Having mastered this pesto, you can complicate the recipe and give free rein to your imagination. After all, the sauce prepared by grinding the ingredients has been known since ancient times and in many countries. Even in Italian pesto, cooks sometimes add a little mint, and basil has recently replaced the traditional parsley and coriander. In the south of France, in Provence, a similar pistou sauce is prepared from a mixture of parsley, coriander and basil, various types of cheese, but no nuts are added. Red pesto is made in the southern United States with the addition of hot red peppers. These examples show that pesto, a sauce prepared by grinding, can also consist of other ingredients. It won't be Italian, but you can call it Russian pesto. The recipe for this sauce is made from products available to us.
Red basil is well known in Russia, but it has too strong an aroma. Therefore, in the absence of green basil, it is better to take 2 bunches of parsley and 1 bunch of cilantro (coriander), peeled (a quarter cup), about one hundred grams of one of the hard varieties of cheese, a few cloves of garlic, olive oil.
Parsley and cilantro are coarser than basil leaves, so it is permissible to spin them in a blender for a few seconds and then grind them in a mortar with coarse salt. Grind nuts, garlic, cheese in a chopper. Mix all ingredients, add olive oil. “Pesto in Russian,” just like pesto, the recipe for which we call classic, goes well with pasta, boiled rice, meat, and fish. It can be a salad dressing, a flavoring for vegetable soup, or a sandwich filling.
In modern kitchen conditions, preparing classic Pesto sauce is very simple. With the help of mixers, blenders and food processors, you can easily chop, beat and mix all the necessary products. Our grandmothers worked with mortars and manually pounded the ingredients - and this required a lot of time and effort. Today I'm going to introduce you to one of my favorite Italian sauces. So, first, let's decide on the products needed to create classic Pesto.
Ingredients:
- 1 bunch of basil – 100 grams;
- Parmesan cheese – 50 grams;
- 120 grams of olive oil;
- 3 medium cloves of garlic;
- 30 grams of pine nuts;
- salt to taste.
Classic Pesto sauce. Step by step recipe
Making the perfect Italian basil sauce is so easy that you can even make it at home. To do this, follow the following instructions.
- Take a frying pan and put it on low heat, heat it up.
- Add the shelled pine nuts and fry them.
- Tear 100 grams of basil leaves into a separate bowl with your hands: first rinse the greens.
- Let's start working with garlic. We peel three medium cloves and chop them very finely on a cutting board.
- Parmesan cheese must be grated on a medium grater: we will get airy cheese shavings.
- Place all prepared ingredients, namely: basil, cheese, garlic, olive oil, nuts, in a blender bowl and grind.
- Afterwards, you can put our green sauce in a beautiful bowl and serve it with meat or fish.
So we have prepared homemade Pesto sauce, which will perfectly decorate a huge number of meat and fish dishes, as well as Italian spaghetti.
The above recipe shows the classic way to make Pesto sauce at home. For example, it can be not only green, but also red, yellow and purple. The technology for their preparation is the same, the only difference is in the ingredients. So, the following options are prepared from the following ingredients:
- Red pesto: in a blender, grind Parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, roasted pine nuts, olive oil, pepper and salt. If you wish, you can season everything with balsamic vinegar;
- for yellow pesto, mix cheese, nuts and basil: you can season with garlic, olive oil and salt;
- purple sauce is prepared according to the same principle as the classic recipe: only instead of green basil, purple leaves are added.
Pesto sauce prepared at home can decorate a huge number of your dishes. I will give you some tips, by reading which you will learn the secrets of culinary art.
- Pesto sauce with basil goes very well with fish meat: you can take a salmon fillet and wrap it with a thin slice of sliced ham. Drizzle lightly olive oil on top and bake in the oven. Serve with homemade pesto sauce.
- In order for it to be stored longer, it must be properly packaged. Sterilize a glass container and pour our basil sauce into it. Place the vessel in the refrigerator.
- Instead of pine nuts, you can use almonds or hazelnuts.
- Olive oil sauce can be used on pizza instead of tomato sauce. The best options are grilled vegetables and various salads: with which it gives amazing results.
A very popular sauce in Italy, which has found its admirers outside the country. It is believed that this sauce is part of the daily life of Italians, since it is prepared simply and from affordable ingredients.
If we talk about the taste of the sauce, then it should be said that the sauce has a very rich taste and aroma. This sauce is not a dietary sauce, but at the same time it can turn the most ordinary dish into a festive one precisely due to its composition. Pesto sauce is used to season salads, add to pasta, and serve with meat and fish.
There are many variations and variations of this sauce, but I personally prefer the classic, basic pesto recipe.
I often cook Italian dishes, so I make pesto sauce regularly. The sauce can be prepared for future use by making 2-3 servings, but I prefer to prepare it for a specific dish and eat only a portion at a time.
In the age of kitchen assistant machines, you can put all the ingredients in a blender bowl and get a sauce in 2 minutes. I always prepare the sauce in a mortar, I love the smell of basil when I grind it in a mortar, I like how the taste, smell and color change with the addition of another ingredient. If you've never made pesto before, be sure to make it in a mortar the first time. By the way, this is also more correct, since basil oxidizes in a blender.
So, to prepare pesto sauce according to the classic recipe, we will need the following products: cold-pressed olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese (you can also use Pecorino, I didn’t have that), fresh basil, garlic.
We remove the basil leaves from the cuttings, wash and dry them.
Place the basil in a mortar and add a pinch of coarse sea salt to make it easier to crush the basil leaves into a paste.
If you have peeled pine nuts, believe me, you are very lucky; I was not so lucky, and I peeled them manually - using a kitchen hammer.
Add nuts to the mortar as well.
Peel the garlic and chop it into smaller pieces as desired.
Add garlic to the rest of the ingredients. Adjust the amount of garlic to your taste.
Grate Parmesan cheese onto a fine grater. If you have Pecorino cheese, add that too.
We put the cheese in a mortar and now begin to grind the contents of the mortar with a pestle until it becomes mushy.
Add olive oil in small portions and stir the sauce. If you use the sauce for salad dressing or as a pasta sauce, it is better to make it thicker.
If you did not use all the sauce or prepared more, you can put the sauce in a glass jar, add olive oil and put it in the refrigerator. The sauce should be stored for no more than 5 days. I still recommend making fresh pesto each time.
In my family, this sauce goes best with creamy pasta sauce. I add a little pesto, which absolutely transforms the plain creamy sauce.
Prepared from fresh natural products, classic pesto sauce can be a good helper for housewives in preparing traditional Italian dishes.
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