Pesto with no machines

[Auspicious]

Mash up with a morter and pestle a bunch of chopped garlic with kosher salt. Til it's a paste. Add a load of basil leaves; if they're chopped a bit first, it's easier. Once again, make a paste, now bright green and fragrant.. Then. add a bunch of grated really good parmigiana cheese ...okay, asiago or romano will do, but the best is parmigiana reggiano...and mash the heck out of that...still in the same bowl. Then you add a bunch of pignole or pine nuts, or walnuts if you don't have pine nuts and smash that in. Finally, by drops, you add fine olive oil, bash that in as well, and when it gets the right texture, voila! I mean, Ecco! pesto. I personally like to use the morter and pestle method, because there's something about the texture and the mashing together of the ingredients that is BETTER than doing it in my old waring blender....which I have done and would never snicker about...just do the main ingredients in a pulse way, and add the olive oil at the end by drops. Still pulsing. (I have never had a cuisinart or any of that more up to date machinery.) But really, even though your forearm gets tired, I think you get a better texture for putting pesto on pasta with the old fashioned way.

Copied from a cooking site I frequent.

[CapnK]

...making me drool, just reading that....mmmm....  ;D