Sauce lover - Nutty Pesto Sauce

I always dream to own a kitchen where I can own a little garden and grow a lot of spice and fresh herbs. But I guess it did take a lot of commitment when you are trying to grow some plant (I don’t want to kill any plant), so far I only have basil and coriander in my garden (not inside my kitchen but next to my pool, so my dog can't play with it).

Thanks to the beautiful sunlight in Australia, our basil and coriander grow so fast, mum always tell me to make some pesto sauce when our basil starts growing too big. To be honest, I never really like the sauce that you buy from store. I think they have way too much chemical and preservation, which make them look beautiful for months and months. Therefore I tend to DIY the sauce when it not too much hassles to make. And pesto is one of the easy sauces that I use a lot when I’m making pasta or just purely use it as dip.

I can guarantee that home made pesto will have no chemical and preservation in it, the most natural method to preserve it is using oil to prevent the basil expose to much to the air. The reason why I call it nutty is because I’m not only uses pine nut; I also use white sesame and macadamia oil. I’m a huge fan of sesame; it is not as heavy as other nuts and also has a very unique fragrance. And Macadamia oil is one of my new found in my local supermarket and before I read an article about all sort of oil. Apparently macadamia oil is one of the healthy oil, which is great for cooling and it also add some more nut flavor into your dish.

If you don’t like the taste of basil, you can always switch it to other herbs such as spinach, kale, mint or coriander. And feel free to use any nut that you have at home like almond, cashew, peanut or macadamia. I’m sure I have provided you a lot of different combination already. But I love the original basil pesto the best.

Ingredient

2 cup of pack Basil Leave

40g Pine Nut
20g White Sesame
2-3 Garlic Clove
20g Parmesan Cheese
60ml Macadamia Oil +10ml
1 teaspoon Salt

1) Wash and dry the basil leave. ( Too much water will make the pesto goes off quicker)

2) Bake pine nut at 160C for 4 minutes or until it turn golden color.

3) Without oil, put white sesame into a pan with medium high heat and keep stirring until it turns golden color.(For nut, you can buy roasted nut from store, which save time baking the nut.)

4) Please the garlic; basil leave and all nuts into good processor and blend for 1 minute until no big piece chuck left.

  

5) Add salt, Parmesan cheese and oil into the food processor. Keep blend it for another minute until it all combined and finely grounded.

6) Transfer to clean and sanitized container. Pour another 10ml of oil on top of the pesto to prevent too much exposure to air.

Note: Pesto will start changing to a darker color after few days but it is ok to eat. But I do love to eat it fresh on the day.

Bon Appetite.