Ligurian pesto
Instructions
Wash thoroughly in cold running water the basil leaves and let them air-dry, stretched out on a towel.
Put them in a mortar, dry, add the salt and the garlic cloves and started to pound with the pestle.
Do not beat with pestle, but crushed with force, without giving shots in mortar.
Add a little cheese at a time alternating the two types and, when you have a homogeneous compound, take down the wire olive oil stirring with a wooden spatula until mixture is smooth and creamy.
It is a mistake to remove the pesto from the mortar to add oil, in fact part of the fragrance of Basil stays on mortar walls; then adding the oil in the same pan, this absorbs all the aroma (to get a good pesto is very important to the quality of the Basil, which should be, as riccio and the quality of the oil, which should be always chosen extra-vergine).
Wishing you can also prepare the pesto with the help of Blender, which simplifies preparedness and can give good average results; in this case you put the oil, basil, garlic and salt in a blender and transferred the mixture into a bowl where you will add the cheese.
Blend for a few minutes, making sure the pesto becomes foamy.
Pesto is a cold sauce, but using a hot, putting it in stews or by adding it to the pasta is dry, hot, having stretched with a few tablespoons of boiling water.
Variation: you can add lightly toasted pine nuts; or walnut kernels and milk curd.
Ingredients and dosing for 4 persons
- 30 leaves basil just picked
- 20 g of grated pecorino cheese
- 20 g of grated parmesan cheese
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 70 g of ligurian olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon of bolded text table salt