Quick and Delicious Pesto Sauce Recipe

A hard time keeping plastic plants alive 🙂

As you can probably tell, I love to cook. No kidding, right…I run a food blog. Unlike a lot of the cooks and chefs I watch on TV and online, I can’t seem to grow herbs 🙁 The running joke for us is that I can’t keep plastic plants alive. I managed to kill a cactus once… I’m not kidding. These things survive in the desert, how is it possible for me to kill a cactus?

This saddens me a bit because I really enjoy using fresh herbs. Also, when you grow your own products, you know what’s going into them and it’s cheaper. This year, I gave it another shot. As soon as the weather warmed up, I picked up fresh soil, basil and parsley.

We have a planter that fits nicely on our deck railing. Our little guy helped me pour in the soil, plant the herbs and water them. Was it going to work? Maybe his help was the magic touch I’d been missing all along. Or…

Mother Nature felt sorry for me 🙂

The stars aligned this year for our herbs. The weather has been very unpredictable for outdoor recreational activities, but it’s totally helped our little herb garden. Our herbs look full and healthy and I haven’t needed to buy basil or parsley this summer!

This is what prompted today’s recipe… I have a lot of basil. It was so nice to make a recipe using basil we grew. The recipe turned out perfectly. Originally, I made the pesto sauce to use on the fettuccini I was making for dinner. While preparing the fresh pasta, I got peckish… so I spread a little pesto sauce on grilled bread, added a couple of slices of fresh tomato and sprinkled a little salt and pepper over it. OMG!!! Consider this recipe number two within this post. So delicious.

Where do we use pesto?

Typically, we use this on pizza, pasta and crusty bread. It’s also perfect as a dip.

If you haven’t yet, try your hand at growing some fresh herbs this year. What’s the worse that can happen? If they don’t grow, I suggest a visit to your local farmer’s market. That’s fun too.

Have a fresh-herb-pesto-kind-of-day, and eat well, friends.

Print Recipe

Quick and Delicious Pesto Sauce Recipe

This pesto sauce recipe is ready in minutes and perfect on pasta, crusty bread or pizza. It's better and fresher than most store bought versions.

Prep Time10 mins

Total Time10 mins

Course: Appetizer, Dip, Sauce, Snack

Cuisine: American, Canadian, Italian, North American

Servings: 1 1/4 cups

Author: Nelson Cardoso

Ingredients

• 2 cups basil leaves, packed (1.7 oz or 48 g)
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup pine nuts
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Instructions

• Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend until desired consistency.
• More steps? ... nope, it's ready! Enjoy this pesto sauce on crusty bread, pizza, pasta, as a dip, etc.

Notes

The fresher the ingredients, the better this pesto will taste.