Pesto Sauce

What have you been doing buying Pesto from the market; when you can make your own delicious Pesto at home!! Yes, its really easy and so cheap! Dont go by the picture I posted above, that is me going all rustic and using my mortar and pestle instead of a blender :) But both the versions taste delicious! Here's the recipe for you:

Ingredients:

Fresh sweet basil leaves - 2 cups packed.

Pine nuts - 1/4 cup

Green chilies - 2-4 (optional)

Garlic - 6-8 cloves 

Extra virgin olive oil - 2/3 cup

Salt and freshly ground black pepper - to taste

Pecorino cheese - 1/2 cup, freshly grated 

Method:

- Put the basil, nuts and garlic in a food processor or a blender and mix it.

- Add the green chilies, oil, cheese and seasoning and mix till well blended.

Tips:

- You can use this to prepare Pasta, as a dip for your pita chips or other snacks and also as a spread for you breads. All of them taste so good!

- Skip the green chilies if you don't like spice. But when I prepare this for Pasta I like to add it and when I want to use it as a dip, I skip it.

- If you don't get Pecorino cheese, you can substitute it with Parmesan cheese too.

- Skip or go easy on the garlic if you don't like the flavor a lot. I am crazy and love it so all my recipes tend to have a lot of it :)

- You can make a lot of this in advance and freeze it. A tip for freezing is, put the sauce in ice cube trays and when frozen, pop them out and store in a freezer bag. This way, you can just use a few cubes at a time as per required, instead of having to thaw a whole blob and have left over sauce.

Healthy Twist:

- Use Walnuts instead of pine nuts.

- Go easy on cheese and olive oil.