Spaghetti al pesto Genovese!

My recipe for spaghetti al pesto Genovese!

by Eirini Voulgari

It's such a delicious dish! But it's a summertime recipe, unless you have made a lot of basil pesto and stored it in small glass jars in the freezer. Τhe reason is that this kind of broadleaf Genovese basil does not survive in the winter.

Ingredients for pesto Genovese:

• 100 gr fresh leaves of broadleaf basil (Genovese) (washed with cold water and dried well)

• 5 medium sized peeled cloves of garlic (ideally of the small-cloved garlic variety with purplish coloured cloves), 

• 4 tablespoons of pine nuts

• 1 teacup of grated parmesan

• 3 tablespoons of grated pecorino romano 

• 1 teacup of virgin olive oil

How to make basil pesto Genovese:

1. Place the basil leaves, the cloves of garlic and the pine nuts in a blender and mix them well. Empty the mixture in a large bowl.
2. Pour the olive oil in the bowl and mix with a spoon.
3. Add the grated cheese in the bowl and mix all the ingredients with a spoon, so that you end up with a homogeneous mixture.
4. The pesto is ready to be used. 
Note: If there is no blender, or if there's a power cut, you can still make pesto Genovese by beating the ingredients with a mortar and pestle. In this case you should julienne the basil leaves and crush, slice and mince the garlic before putting them in the mortar.

Ingredients for the spaghetti:

• 300 gr of spaghetti

• salt

Preparation:

1. Bring a large pot with water to a boil. Add some salt. Then add the spaghetti and let it cook al dente. 
2. Reserve a hot tea cup of the water from the pot and strain the spaghetti.
3. Place the pesto in the empty pot and add the strained spaghetti on top of it.  Pour the cup of water you have reserved, stir well and cover the pot with its lid. Let it stay for a couple of minutes so that the water is absorbed and the wonderful basil and pine nut essences plus the strong appetizing flavours of these two kinds of cheese are infused in the spaghetti. 
4. Serve immediately garnishing each plate with some fresh basil leaves and some tomato slices.

(for three portions of spaghetti)