Presto Pesto!

There is a restaurant in Marlow, Oklahoma called Giuseppe’s. There were many Italians who migrated to Oklahoma during the building of the railroad across the U.S. and some stayed. We are very lucky that throughout the state, we have some lovely authentic Italian restaurants that are fantastic! Marlow, Oklahoma is a town of about 1,200 people and it is about an hour and a half down there so it is usually a Saturday event for us. When we go, I almost always get the same thing – Green Spaghetti. I just love it. It is actually called something else and I never can remember but it is a spaghettini with pesto sauce. I am just in heaven when I eat it. Once, in the grocery store I bought a box of spaghettini and a jar of pesto, brought it home and cooked it up—–AND, threw it out. Yuk! That was awful!

Next time I went, I spoke with the chef about his pesto recipe and he gave it to me. First, you should know that he basically grows his own basil and pine nuts while he raises cows to milk and make cheese. He has an olive tree in his backyard so he picks olives at the peak of ripeness and presses them as well as mining for coarse salt on the weekends! Okay, not really but close…..that’s not going to happen in my busy life so I did the best I could and it took about 15 minutes from start to finish.

Ingredients:

3 Cups stemmed, washed, and dried basil leaves
½ cup Olive Oil
¼ cup pine nuts
¾ cup parmesan cheese
1 Tablespoon coarse salt
4 cloves of garlic
Roast the pine nuts for a few minutes:

Put it all into a food processor and pulse it into a paste:

Eat it now:

Or, place in a container and cover with olive oil then seal and place in freezer. Will keep about 6 months. The olive oil will keep the top basil from turning black during the freezing process.

Enjoy!!

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