That makes my mouth water as I type it. Excuse me while I step into the kitchen and help myself to some more.

Ok so *burp* *burp* where were we?

The wonderful guys at Gorus, our organic foods suppliers (home delivery – hooray!) recently expanded their repertoire to include basil, parsley, cherry tomatos, broccoli and then some. So when the cook called to say she won’t be showing up for a few days, we put our (figurative) chef caps on and got to work. Recently we’d picked up organic whole wheat fusilli from Fabindia so it was looking like a 100% organic meal. Well if you exclude the walnuts… and the garlic…and …. oh well.

So here’s the recipe for the pesto. This makes enough pesto for one pasta dish for two (relatively hungry) people:

3 cups of chopped basil

1/2 cup Olive oil

1/3 cup walnuts (authentic Italian recipes recommend pine nuts but walnuts are easier to find where I live)

6 Garlic pods

Salt & Black pepper to taste

Blend the nuts first, then add the basil, garlic, olive oil. Blend till you get a grainy mix. Add the salt and black pepper to this and give it one more final whisk. Resist the temptation to lick the aromatic resultant sause right off the blender (that’s what I did!)

Now boil the pasta, steam the broccoli, then chop it into edible florets, de-stem the cherry tomatos. In a skillet, add some olive oil, saute the broccoli, add the pasta, mix in the pesto. Add the cherry tomatos and some freshly ground black pepper if you like.

Enjoy the meal with some guava juice or red wine 🙂