Slowly But Surely...
It was one of my goals when I started planting my basil to be able to make my own pesto sauce. My family loves pasta, and pesto is one of their favorites so it is just natural that I aim to make this sauce from scratch. Of course, there's 
Yesterday, I shared about the latest on my basil plants. They are doing well after the re-potting, that I also pruned them. It is the second time that I pruned these babies since the start.
From a few sources that I found, I learned that it is advisable to regularly visit the basil and check where new tiny leaves are starting to grow and cut the stem just above these tiny leaves. This should force the basil to branch out and become bushy eventually.
My plants are not yet that bushy, nor are they big. Then again, since I have a lot of them, I still managed to get a bunch.
Making The Pesto
Traditional pesto has basil, olive oil, garlic and pine nuts. You can also add parmesan cheese and salt according to taste.
This morning I passes by the grocery to grab olive oil and pine nuts. I heard pine nuts are pricey, but boy oh boy, I didn't know it's very expensive! It costs AED 379 a kilo, which is around $103! Of course I did not buy a kilo, just 50g will go a long way.
Since I didn't have that much basil leaves to yield a big jar of pesto, I decided to skip the food processor and just use mortar and pestle.
After some pounding and grinding, I got only little, but still happy that I was able to make my own from scratch!
Now, I am. Looking forward to when my basil would branch out and give more leaves. That would be double the amount I got today!
I put my pesto in a small jar, and would probably use it when I cook pasta tomorrow. Yay, I'm so excited!
for this beautiful Hiveph badge!