Baby Pesto

All done working. That’s it. My now ex-team managed to invite me for a quick lunch but so far I was the only leaving team member who didn’t get a present or a card. That says it all… Not that I was expecting or wanting anything, really. I am just glad that its over.

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In the evening our whole family engaged in the battle also known as “feeding Henry”. There is one dish though that Henry will eat if everything else fails. It’s pesto! Not any type of pesto though. I discovered this recipe in Anabel Karmel’s books. In general, Anabel’s  recipes are quite elaborate for baby/toddler cooking. They usually come with ton of spices and flavors. This one is quite simple though.

You need all the usual ingredients plus one extra. This extra seems to make all the difference. It stopped being a kids version of pesto long time ago. This is now how I make pesto for everyone.

For the recipes I cook often I usually don’t use any precise measurements. You can’t really operate a scale while making kids food, in my opinion anyway. For this pesto I usually take:

2 bunches of Basil
1 bunch of flat leaf parsley (this is our secret extra)
one packet of pine nuts (I think they are about 100gr packets)
2 cloves of garlic
Parmesan cheese (I’d guess about 150gr)
salt and pepper (Henry likes his food spicy, so I can use an adult measure of pepper)

I whizz it all in a mixer, slowly adding olive oil. Through trial and error I discovered that to make it taste gentle and a bit sweet you need to keep the proportion between Basil and Parsley 2:1. Too much parsley makes it taste a bit bitter.

There is no measure for how much oil I add – it totally depends on how the paste looks like. Generally I would say I add about a small coffee cup of oil.

Done.
When I cook pasta with pesto I also add fresh cherry tomatoes cut in half to the already cooked pasta. Just add them into the drained pasta and leave them to warm up for a minute. I then add cold pesto so it cools down the pasta a bit.

Lovely, really. You should try it!