I love to eat Italian food as there are plenty of vegetarian recipes. I know most people would not say vegetarian dishes are first thing that come to mind on thinking of Italian cuisine. I am happy with Italian food as not only there are vegetarian foods but also I can manage to find things I can eat without triggering my allergies. I think it’s most unfortunate that I cannot eat bell peppers, pumpkins and mushrooms as they do tend to have them in many of the recipes.
Having said that, I am still a big fan of Italian food, as I love pasta and pizza and gnocchi. I love to have various kinds of pesto sauces with the pasta and gnocchi. One day I was flicking through the weekend magazine of the paper Guardian and found a recipe for a different kind of pesto sauce. That got me thinking and I tried making the sauce. It tasted nice and so decided to substitute and mix various leaves and nuts to make different kinds of pesto.
I make the standard pesto with bunch of basil, a couple of cloves of garlic, a couple of green chillies, handful of pine nuts (roasted taste better), grated parmesan about half cup, salt to taste and olive oil. The garlic, chillies, parmesan and salt are all to your own taste and so can be varied in amount. Olive oil is added so it helps to make a paste and also keep it loose and add flavour to the pasta. Jamie Oliver suggests using rocket instead of basil too.
The recipe from the Guardian magazine suggested that I use a big bunch of water cress instead of basil. Also use blanched almonds instead of pine nuts. The rest remains same – garlic, chillies or black pepper, parmesan and olive oil. I tried this recipe and found that there was a sharper taste to the pesto because of the water cress. This gave me an idea to try out various substitutes for the green leaves and the nuts. I have tried using rocket, spinach, coriander, water cress, basil either individually or as a mixture of two or more. The nuts used can be pine, cashew, walnuts or almonds. The variety of the pesto is amazing and the taste differs with every preparation. I never measure any of the ingredients and this also makes for a different taste every single time. There is a suggestion in the Best Recipes website that you can make the pesto creamy by adding cream, sour cream or even carnation milk. I have not gone that far as I am not such a big fan of creamy sauces, but maybe I will try adding sour cream someday. I think one can improve the pesto by adding a few pieces of sun dried tomatoes which have been soaked into the pesto when making the paste.
The best thing about homemade pesto is that you can leave it a bit coarse and that gives it a good bite to the pasta. Every time I make pesto it generally is more than enough for at least 3 – 4 meals that means it should be enough pesto for making pasta to serve 6 – 8 people. I am now growing basil and coriander and so should make fresh pesto once again. I sadly have taken a short cut and got ready made pesto but having made my own at home I really know there is a big difference. I will resume my fresh sauce making by getting big bunches of the herbs and mixing them all and keeping it in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
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