Pesto, pesto, pesto!

My friend Ailsa has a blog that makes me hungry every time I read it.  The other day she did a post about almond pesto and it reminded me that I better hurry up and use up some of the last of my summer basil.

Ailsa recipe for almond pesto sounds delicious but since I had some pine nuts on hand, I decided to use a standby recipe that I got from my coworker, cook and mom extroidinaire, Diana.

Easy peasy and great for a quick weeknight supper.  It's also in the freezes beautifully section of the cookbook.  :)

Gather and clean the fresh basil.  For about five-six cups of fresh pasta, I used about 2 cups of fresh basil.

I also peeled three cloves of garlic. 

Toast the pinenuts until they release the oils.  I had a big batch so I only used about a cup for this recipe and then froze the rest.

I added the basil and the garlic to the blender along with the toasted pinenuts and about a cup of grated parmesan cheese.  (Actually, I used pecorino romano because that is what I had on hand.)

Once everything is pulsed up together, slowly pour in olive oil and continue blending.  Stop adding olive oil when the pesto reaches a soft looking consistency.

I refrigerated this overnight so that the next day all I had to do was blacken some chicken, heat up some green peas and cook the pasta.  I like to use the rotini kind or something with ridges to help the pesto stick to the pasta.  Serve with a little extra parmesan cheese.