The very name of the famous Italian pesto sauce already contains the definition of the method of its preparation: pestato in Italian means stomping, rubbing, crushing. To prepare it, you need a mortar and pestle, preferably stone. Copper and wood can add unwanted shades to the taste and aroma of the sauce. If you want to get a real pesto, then refuse blenders, mixers and choppers - they will never lead to the desired result.
The classic composition of pesto sauce has been determined for a long time, of course, it includes products that are available in Italy, but not always commercially available in Russia.
To make a real pesto sauce, you need green basil, parmesan cheese and olive oil - this is the basis. As an addition: nuts - seeds of Italian pine pine, garlic, sea coarse salt. There is no exact recipe for the sauce - it is prepared on a hunch, using the sample method (but better without errors). Basil leaves with salt begin to grind, it is its large crystals that contribute to the effective grinding and juice production. Olive oil is added a little, the ingredients are introduced gradually.
This simple pesto sauce can be cooked in five minutes and served with regular pasta, boiled fish or meat. Its taste and aroma will decorate any, most unpretentious dish.
If the pesto is not prepared by a very experienced cook, it is more advisable to have at hand the exact composition of the products, without analogues and substitutes, and their proportional proportions.
To cook pesto, the recipe of which can be called 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 in a mortar and, adding a little salt, in a circular motion we begin to rub the leaves so that we get gruel. Add chopped garlic and whole nuts in small portions. At the very end, add the grated cheese and olive oil. Ready, properly cooked sauce is a uniform silky mass of green, rather thick consistency. It is added to soups, sandwiches are made with it. The sauce is stored in the refrigerator for several days, and well-packed, in the freezer for a month, without losing its taste.
Having mastered this pesto, the recipe can be complicated and give free rein to your imagination. Indeed, 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 traditional parsley and coriander. In the south of France, in Provence, a similar pista sauce is prepared from a mixture of parsley, coriander and basil, various varieties of cheese, but nuts are not added. Red pesto is made in the south of the USA, adding sun-dried tomatoes and hot red pepper. These examples are burning that pesto sauce prepared by grinding may also consist of other ingredients. It will not be Italian, but you can call it Russian pesto. The recipe for this sauce is made up of the products available to us.
Red basil is well known in Russia, but it has a too strong aroma. Therefore, in the absence of green basil, it is better to take 2 bunches of parsley and 1 bunch of cilantro (coriander), peeled pine nuts (a quarter cup), about a hundred grams of cheese from one of the hard varieties, a few cloves of garlic, olive oil.
Parsley and cilantro are coarser than basil leaves, so it’s permissible to scroll them in a blender for a few seconds and then grind in a mortar with coarse salt. Grind nuts, garlic, cheese in a grinder. Mix all the ingredients, add olive oil. "Russian pesto", like pesto, the recipe of which we call classical, goes well with pasta, boiled rice, meat, fish. It can be salad dressing, and flavoring for vegetable soup, and a filling for a sandwich.