Pasta with pesto

My sister loves pesto. She buys pesto. For me, the stuff shops sell is disgusting. So I made pesto. It's quite easy. I didn't find any pine nuts in the store, so I bought sunflower seeds that work just as well, but you need to roast the seeds before adding them to the blender.  Same thing if you find pine nuts. Great thing about this homemade pesto is that you can freeze it (but if you plan on freezing, don't add parmesan cheese. It doesn't freeze well). But if you plan on making a whole lot of pesto, add the cheese. No preservatives, no junk. Just pure, fresh goodness.

Type of dish: main

Cost: medium

Difficulty: easy

Time:  20 min

Serves: 6-8

Preparation time: 15 min

What you need to make this dish:

Blender, spoon, sharp knife, medium saucepan, small frying pan, collander, plates to serve,

Ingredients:

• 20 gr parmesan cheese
• 2 fresh basil plants (or basil bunches, whatever you get)
• pasta
• 1/2 packet sunflower seeds
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 30 ml olive oil (plain kind, nothing fancy)
• 1 small garlic clove peeled (additional)

How to prepare:

Heat water in the saucepan, when boiling, put in the pasta to cook (according to the time on the package). Heat frying pan, and when hot, add the sunflower seeds roast them a little. Toss them around for a few minutes, and when done, put in blender. Also put in the garlic clove, olive oil, salt and pepper. Now, cut down the basil leaves, (JUST LEAVES!) and throw them in the blender too. Cut up the parmesan in small pieces and toss that in the blender. Put the top on the blender and blend for 5 minutes, stopping to swish things around, so everything is well cut. Additionally, if it seems to you that it's not oily enough, add more olive oil. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, clean the saucepan and put back in the pasta, add a healthy dollop of the pesto, mix around do the pasta is nicely coated with the pesto and serve on plates, adding a basil leaf on top and a few shavings of parmesan cheese. Yum! Dig in!

Additional info: 

if you have ziplock baggies, the size of a childs hand, freeze in them each a large spooon of pesto. If you have small plastic containers (I have some from IKEA), put in the pesto, and for freezing, pour some olive oil on the top, then freeze. If you have more ice cube trays then normal people have, freeze in the tray, also adding a layer of olive oil at the top. When you need it, just take it out one day ahead and pop in the fridge. It'll defrost nicely. When I don't have time for long defrosting, I just fill up a bowl with lukewarm water, pop the frozen stuff in and just replace the water with fresh lukewarm, until the product has defrosted completly. Bah, that easy. Just don't use a microwave for this, as it usually cooks the stuff before you want it cooked. Sorry to pop your dreams. I really am sorry. 

Serve with:

pasta of the long kind, like tagliatelle, spaghetti, and so on. Also, some pesto with a caprese salad is nice too, but add first more olive oil, as it serves like a drippy sauce. You may also add some pesto to garlic bread,or to your usual tomato sauce (because it's basil).