Simple Pesto Sauce

I love pesto ... a couple Tbsp pesto on a serving of home made pasta is my idea of heaven. The only problem is the store bought pesto is REALLY expensive.  Now, I have NO idea if mine ended up any cheaper to make than the expensive store bought pesto, because I didn't do a price comparison of ingredients, but I can tell you this, mine tasted EXACTLY the same as the store brand, and nutritionally it was pretty close as well :) The only major difference was that my pesto was somewhat lower in sodium as I didn't add any extra salt in the recipe. I like to season things to taste on my plate and besides this really doesn't need any extra salt, it's delicious as is.

I always keep some in the freezer and whenever I need it,  I just thaw the pesto to room temperature, use what I need and then put the rest back in the freezer. A serving, appropriate for a single serving of pasta (85g dry weight) is about 2 Tbsp or 30g by weight and clocks in at 164 calories  with 112mg sodium and 16g fat ... even better, there are no ingredients you can't pronounce ;)

There are several ways you can throw this together ... you could go real old school and use a mortar and pestle but I took the easy way out and used my food processor. Depending on how large a batch you are making you can scale up anywhere from a small mini processor attachment on your immersion blender to a magic bullet or even a blender (although blenders are a bit finicky for a small volume thick paste) Basically anything that will pulverize and mince all your ingredients together into a think paste will do. It really isn't too important that this be perfect, a course chopped pesto will just look more rustic (artisan), but it will taste the same  and might even look better ;) Some purists even suggest mincing everything using a sharp knife for 20 minutes or so to get a fine even mince ... they even say the flavour is better done this way ... me? I go for easy and honestly don't see how the chopping method would affect the favour at all ... the texture maybe, but the flavour? No way.

I used a large bunch of fresh basil from my grocery store to make this.  The bundle weighed about 60g give or take and was about 2 cups when chopped and loosely packed into a measure cup. All measurements are approximate,  and you can scale this quite easily to make more servings. As written this recipe made about 16 Tbsp or 8 servings 

Ingredients:

• 60g Basil, Fresh (about 2 cups when chopped and loosely packed)
• 4 Garlic Cloves, whole  peeled
• 60g Pine Nuts (about 1/2 cup)
• 1/3 cup Olive Oil  (use the good stuff, extra virgin is great in this)
• 60g Parmesan Cheese, Grated (about 2 ounces)

Directions:

1. So the short of this is ... throw everything into the pulverizer of your choice (ie: food processor) and blend to a paste. Doesn't get any simpler than that.
2. If you think your pesto is too thick you can add a little more oil to thin it out a bit
3. Unless you are being exact for calorie counting purposes you don't have to obsess about exact measurements.
4. I suppose if you want to get fancy you can doctor this up any number of different ways but made using the above recipe, this is a very good imitation of the Olivieri Brand Pesto 

Pesto is one of those wonderful foods I can't do without, but it IS a calorie dense food, so for me, accurate measuring of ingredients and portions is essential for accurate tracking purposes.  It's something I really enjoy every now and again ... I am just really careful about portion size and I track it carefully ... but I DON'T skimp ... I will allow myself a FULL portion of pasta and a full serving of pesto to go with ... I'm just careful about measuring everything that goes onto my plate :)

For stuff like this, it helps to be a bit anal about tracking though ... just sayin ;)


Note: If you don't have Pine Nuts I've heard you can substitute almonds but I haven't tried that .. seems like it would work just fine though :)