I'm going to show you how to make a beautiful
homemade pesto. Pesto, the great Italian classic, for whatever reason we all love pesto. I've got
two things I want to show you here: the basic principle, how you at home can make the very best
pesto ever, and kind of open up your mind to the fact that there's hundreds, maybe even thousands
of pesto recipes. 'Pesto' means 'to pound', right, to wallop. How do we make a pesto? Well first up
you can do it in a liquidiser or a food processor, but really 'to pound' is about the ultimate, you
know... old-school kitchen gadget. The pestle and mortar, two bits of rock. Right we need garlic,
absolutely. Then they have some form of nut, right, so you know the Genovese nut is the pine
nut, actually quite expensive, but it could easily be you know... almonds, hazelnut, it could be
walnuts right, so you know, pick your nuts! Fill your boots! You could blend them, pick one, but
the idea of a pesto around Italy, North to South, up mountains, on islands right, they make a pesto
with what they have. The Genovese style pesto is with beautiful basil, right? It could be mint, it
could be parsley, it could be little kind of wild nepitellas, minced herbs right, you can use so
many different beautiful herbs. Then the cheese, yes the Genovese could use the parmesan or
the pecorino, but you could use ricotta, ricotta salata, let's do it. So, in a pestle,
first up we'll pick our nuts. I'll go in with some almonds, but then you could add a couple
of little hazelnuts just for a little funk, a little richness. We're going to use the pestle
and mortar to crush this up until it's nice and creamy. The point of making pesto is to make
it there and then at the last minute so you get all the fragrance. We'll take some garlic, now
if I put all of that in there it's going to be too funky, garlic is hot it's pungent. So just a
third of a garlic clove goes in. And then we'll pound that into a paste. Then we can
choose our herb and for me the joy of pesto is you can use all kinds of herbs. I've been in
Sardinia where they've used myrtle and that was simply divine. You know... parsley, mint, even
little new growth thyme-tips, beautiful. So I'm going to go in with some mint, parsley, and some
basil, right? And we'll pound that up to a mush. And you can go super fine if you want or you
can keep it kind of chunky or a bit of both. Really really nice. Now let's go in with some
cheese; parmesan or pecorino is pretty classic. I quite like to blend parmesan and pecorino,
really delicious, you get that kind of nice savoury flavour from the parmesan and that
tang from the pecorino. Then we just kind of pound that in as well, so it all becomes one.
Now what we're going to do is loosen this with some olive oil and you can use olive oil, extra
virgin olive oil... as you travel around Italy you'll just see the most incredible variation of
nuts, cheese, oils, herbs. You know there's little things that I've seen like in Rome, I've seen
nonnas boil - you know when your water's coming up to the boil when you're about to cook your pasta
- they'll put just one little chunk like that of potato, peeled, and they'll cook
it almost like for mashed potato, and they'll take a steaming piece of potato
and put it in there, and they'll mush that little bit of boiled potato into a mush and
actually that starchiness from the potato, that is going to help all of this cling to your
pasta, right? So again it gives you that lovely kind of carb-on-carb savouriness that's gorgeous.
So I might, I might - and I might get slapped by some nonnas or kissed by others - but just a few
drips of lemon juice could be genius or a faux pas, that's up to you to decide, right? But that
is the beauty of pestos. I have been on an island in the far Southern part of Italy and I've seen
a nonna making not a dissimilar pesto to this, but with different coloured cherry tomatoes and a
little kiss of honey. And then my friends just do a little crostini, let's toast that, and all it
needs is a nice lob of beautiful pesto. So guys I hope you liked our little video. I hope you feel
that I've really opened up the world of pesto. Pesto is just one of those things that people
love. For me what's so exciting is people love pesto but they think they just love one type
of pesto, and there's many out there! So use your creativity, get the ingredients, have
a little bash-up, make some homemade pesto. So good.
