pesto tortellini

Image from CanaryGirl's Vox food blog. yum. I knew I shoulda taken my own picture last night!

You said you don't like any of the food you have made so far. Maybe you will like this. We made it last night & it was soooo good. We love buying the pre-made pesto (yay Buitoni! don't go for store-brand on this stuff) and we always eat it with cheese tortellini (frozen store-brand has treated us well so far on these). Last night we made the pesto from scratch!

First, go out and get yourself an herb cutter, food processor, or blender. I started out chopping the ingredients, thinking I could do it fine with a knife. I relented and brought out the blender and it made a nice creamy sauce (not too creamy though - pesto does have some texture).

Homemade Pesto Sauce

1 cup basil leaves, loosely packed
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp pine nuts or walnuts, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
Salt & pepper to taste

The instructions are simple and you can't really mess it up, especially since the sauce requires no cooking. Chop, mince, dice, tear, blend, puree, whatever! until everything is teeny and mixed up and sauce-like. To save time, put your water on to boil & cook 2 servings of your favorite pasta while you make the sauce. It doesn't seem to yield a lot of sauce but once you stir it all into the cooked pasta it gives it a pretty good coating all around. And you don't want to overdo the sauce:pasta ratio 'cause that raw garlic sure has a kick! (in a good way). We ate our pesto tortellini with a little salad with all the yummies on it like tomato, a bit of avo, croutons, etc.

If you end up trying the recipe, let me know what you think!