Characteristic of Italian cuisine is the abundance of the various sauces allowing to shade and add taste of any dish. Universal pesto sauce is used as snack and addition to fish, a bird and meat. Paste in this sauce also belongs to traditional Italian dishes.
Pesto sauce – classics of Italian cuisine. Its name came from the word pestato that means to pound. If to use a traditional technique of preparation песто, the mortar in which its ingredients are pounded to a condition of dense paste will be required. A basis for песто is the green basil, but in some Italian areas for its preparation dried tomatoes are used. In this case sauce turns out not green, but red color. Italians add песто almost everywhere – cover with it fish, a bird and meat before roasting, put in soups and gas stations, smear and eat together with toasts and crackers. In modern option for preparation of this sauce of the hostess use the blender that, of course, allows to save time considerably. Thanks to the components, pesto sauce contains many calories and the nutrition value of this dish is very high. As train him, without resorting to thermal treatment, all vitamins, minerals and other useful substances which are contained in its ingredients completely remain also in the sauce.
In supermarkets you can buy ready pesto sauce, but what you will be able to prepare by the hands in house conditions will be much more tasty. That it will be also is much cheaper, it is even possible not to mention. For pesto sauce it will be required to you: - 2-3 big bunches of a fresh basil;
- 100 g of Parmesan cheese; - 200 g of the cleaned pecan nuts or cedar;
- 2 garlic gloves; - 100 g of olive oil; - sea salt to taste.
Traditionally for preparation of this sauce the green basil is used, but if it isn't possible to buy it, it is possible to take also violet.
Wash a basil and dry, having used a special drying cell for greens or having just laid out it on paper kitchen towels. Then tear off all leaflets from branches, put them in the blender grinder. Or cedar pour out pecan nuts on a dry frying pan and slightly fry on average fire before emergence of a golden shade. Add nuts to a basil, put garlic in the blender, fill a little sea salt, pour out a half of olive oil and process everything in homogeneous mass. Lay out weight in a separate bowl. Rub a Parmesan cheese on a small grater, add it to a bowl, pour the remained olive oil there and well mix everything, shaking up sauce a fork. Ready песто shift in a glass jar with densely closed cover and you store it in the fridge.
Adding salt, consider that one of ingredients of sauce is parmesan, and it is quite salty grade of cheese. Therefore try not to put too much salt.
Boil pasta in the necessary quantity, being guided by the instruction printed on their packing. You can use for preparation both traditional spaghetti or bukatin, and usual vermicelli, but all of them have to be made of wheat of firm grades – дурум. Cast away paste on a colander, it isn't necessary to wash with water pasta, lay out them in a pan and add pesto sauce, mix and give on a table, having decorated from above with basil leaflets.