Pesto sauce is native to Persia, translated into Russian, its name means "crush", "trample". This sauce has many cooking options, but always has a green color, because basil leaves are necessarily included in it.
Preparing sauce products
Generally, for a pesto sauce, the basic ingredients are always the same. One of the staples of this sauce is basil. Most often, they take the leaves of green basil, rather than red. Red basil has an overly strong aroma that can spoil the smell of the dish.
The sauce is also not complete without parmesan. Many are experimenting by replacing Parmesan with other cheeses: sour cream or suluguni. Sometimes pine nuts or walnuts, vegetable oil, mint, wild garlic are also added.
The classic pesto recipe
This pesto recipe goes well with fish, meat, and just plain spaghetti. It gives the dish a special unique taste.
For cooking you will need:
- juice of half a lemon;
- 100 ml of olive oil;
- 50 g of pine or walnuts;
- 50 g of cheese;
- 3 cloves of garlic;
- a bunch of basil.
Preparation
First you need to prepare the food. Peel the garlic, cut it into small pieces. Rinse, dry and chop the basil finely. Grate the cheese on a coarse grater. Now you should mix the ingredients and grind them in a mortar. Many housewives use a blender or an electric meat grinder for this, but the sauce turns out to be much tastier if you cook it the way our ancestors cooked it.
You do not need to crush the ingredients in a mortar all at once. Food should be added gradually. At the end of cooking, season the sauce with vegetable or olive oil. As a result, you should get a homogeneous mass. Then add salt and lemon sauce.
You can serve pesto not only with fish or meat dishes, but also with simple croutons. This sauce can be stored in a glass jar in the freezer.
Tomato pesto recipe
This sauce is perfect with pizza or pasta, as well as crackers and croutons. For its preparation, you can take both dried and fresh tomatoes. In any case, they must be finely chopped or chopped through a meat grinder. After that, fry in a frying pan in a little vegetable oil.
To make tomato pesto sauce, you will need:
- pepper, salt to taste;
- 125 g of olive oil;
- 1 tbsp. l. balsamic vinegar;
- 50 g of grated Parmesan;
- 30 g roasted pine or walnuts;
- 6-8 fresh tomatoes;
- 3 cloves of garlic;
- 125 g mozzarella cheese.
Preparation
First, cut the cheese and tomatoes into thin slices. Then you should fry the tomatoes, put the grated cheese on plates, rinse and separate the basil from the stems. In a mixer or in a mortar, puree the basil leaves, garlic and cheese. Then add nuts, salt, pepper, olive oil, fresh or sun-dried tomatoes.
The sauce is served in an unusual way. It is laid out on basil leaves.
