My Tried and True Pesto
Updated: Dec 28, 2022
About five years ago my husband and I took a pilgrimage to Italy with our parish and were very blessed to have visited a multitude of beautiful places, one of them being Padua. Before that I had not known much about St. Anthony accept to ask him to help me when I lost things, which is often!
"Tony, Tony,
look around.
Something’s lost
and must be found!"
As a way to celebrate St. Anthony of Padua and other Italian saints, I will look up the region that they come from and make something traditional. Out of that research I learned that fresh pesto would be a great way to honor him and so the perfecting of this recipe began. Now we make it all the time, feast day or not, and I hope you like it as much as we do.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes
Servings: 1 1/2 cups
Ingredients
3 cups fresh basil (OR 2 cups fresh basil and 1 cup fresh spinach)
3 garlic cloves
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup pine nuts OR walnuts (optional)
I made everything in our Cuisinart Smart Stick, one of the best things we registered for. If you have a mini food processor you could make it in that too!
The first time I made this I just used basil, which is the traditional way of making pesto and can also be the expensive way. It was delicious so if you want to go that route then just don't add in the fresh spinach. Measure out 2 cups fresh basil.
On top of the basil, fill the measuring cup with fresh spinach up to 3 cups.
Skin three cloves of garlic, don't worry about mincing them the food processor will do that work for you.
Combine the basil, garlic, and spinach in the food processor and pulse until roughly chopped. *If you want the pine nuts or walnuts this would be the time to put those in.
Locked and loaded! Pulse for about 10-15 seconds, if you are using the smart stick you may have to open it and move your ingredients around and then pulse again.
This is what mine looked like, you don't want to make it too fine just yet because you are going to be running the food processor again.
Pour in the 3/4 cup olive oil and turn the processor back on low for about 10-15 seconds.
This smells so amazing, basil...garlic...olive oil goodness!