The most popular Italian pesto sauce is served with bread, paste and as a garnish to meat dishes. Options песто exist also in other countries. This universal sauce has features in preparation.
Pesto in translation from Italian means ""crushed"" or ""pounded"". Sauce is cooked by grinding of ingredients in the blender or a mortar. Options песто there is a set, both traditional, and modern.
The Province of Liguria with the capital of Genoa is considered the homeland песто. And therefore песто in a Genoa way is classics of a genre. In a marble mortar the wooden pestle pounds a fresh basil, garlic and salt (it is desirable large) to creamy consistence. There stone pines (nutlets of the Italian pine) are added and pounded too. After grinding of air the cheese pekorino which is previously grated on a small grater and olive oil, naturally, Ligurian and the first extraction is added.
There are modern recipes песто where add ginger and mint, cilantro, olives, green olives, spinach, a coriander, lemon zest, mushrooms to a traditional set of ingredients. For vegetarians cheese in песто is replaced with miso paste.
It is absolutely simple to buy the sauce which became so popular around the world in shop. But real песто it is worth preparing independently or to visit the Italian restaurant. The fact is that sauce on counters of supermarkets mixes up by means of machines automatic machines, and nutlets of a stone pine are replaced with cheaper walnut or cashew, quality of oil lower there, and a Parmesan cheese cheaper.
Pesto can be added to a lasagna, to paste, ravioli, gnocchi, soup to the minestrena, it is given with fresh bread or crackers as snack, and to the meat made on a lattice.