Freshly made pesto

With all the dramatic hoopla going on in local news these days, just reading the newspaper takes some comfort food to get through... *wink* okay, so that was a totally lame-ass excuse for an intro and I'll fully disclose that the only time I touched the newspaper in these last few weeks is to use it to take a rather "clever" photo.

One of mom's faves whenever we go to Delicious is the pesto spaghetti, altho she never really knew what went into "the green sauce", just that it tasted great. We tried the bottled one once but that was just plain awful and it took me just this long to find a nice batch of sweet basil to try making it fresh. Thankfully, this version got a double thumbs up from her (she can be the worst critic of my kitchen experiments, so I'm really pleased!).

Freshly made pesto
Ingredients:
A handful of almonds
3/4 handful sweet basil leaves (or adjust to your taste)
Crumbly ricotta cheese (threw this in cos I still had a wee bit leftover of my homemade)
1 tablespoon lemon juice (used this to cut the richness down)
3 - 4 tablespoons Olive oil
Salt to taste

Method:
1. Blanch almonds in hot water to remove skin and then roughly chop.
2. In a food processor, grind almonds together with basil leaves. While it is grinding, drizzle in the olive oil until you get a paste.
3. Do a taste test and add salt, lemon juice, cheese. Pulse again to mix well.
4. To serve: Throw pesto in a bowl of steaming hot spaghetti and toss together. If feeding omnivores, top with chicken pieces or shreds.