August 13, 2022

Frugal basil pesto

It was too hot to cook the meal I had intended for lunch yesterday, and so we just had some pasta with home made basil pesto. The pesto took less than 5 minutes.The basil plant was past it’s best and needed a good chop and so it was a good way to preserve it.

We made half this recipe for 2 of us.To serve I sliced some cherry tomatoes on top. Sun dried ones would have been nicer. On other occasions I have added pulled chicken. I can’t afford pine nuts and so I use some rinsed salted peanuts instead to make my pesto.

I made half the recipe, but if I wanted to store it I would freeze it in the ice cube tray and then bag the cubes up once frozen. This is a quick, cheap, easy meal. I felt like I was in the Mediterranean as I sat and ate in my garden.

Recipe

  • 80g Basil

  • 25g salted peanuts

  • 2 cloves of garlic

  • 150ml of oil

  1. Put the basil, stalks and all into the blender.
  2. Rinse the peanuts, chop and add.
  3. Grate the garlic and the parmesan and add.
  4. Blitz whilst youdrizzle the oil in until you have the consistency that you want (bound together but not too oily)
  5. Add a squeeze of lemon juice if you want and salt and pepper.

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2 Comments

  1. Eleri August 13, 2024 at 8:13 am - Reply

    Lovely sounding recipe – I have a lot of wild basil so might try this with it. About how much parmesan would you use please? X

    • ToniG August 16, 2024 at 3:14 pm - Reply

      I forgot to put the parmesan in the recipe. Sorry. I put about 20g of pesto into this recipe. Thanks for pointing it out for me

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