Creamy and dreamy, this recipe for Creamy Pesto Sauce delights the palate. It’s a great first course for a seafood dinner or a meal in and of itself. You could even use the sauce as a dipper for different appetizers like baguette or focaccia. The possibilities are truly endless once you get the basics down. You’ll never want to buy pasta at the grocery store again once you know what you can do with just your own ingenuity. Pesto sauce is also highly adaptable, so season with whatever your favorite spices are!
History of Pesto
This creamy pesto sauce is a contemporary take on an ancient dish. Pesto means “paste” in Italian, and though we now have the advent of food processors and blenders, Italian peasants made it with simply a mortar and pestle out of available ingredients. It’s an example of the ingenuity of Italian cooking passed on through generations. Now, pesto is most commonly basil, but historically, pesto could be anything you could pound into a paste and combine with cheese and olive oil.
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Creamy Pesto Sauce
Description
Creamy and dreamy.
Ingredients
For the pesto:
- 2 cups basil leaves
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup walnuts
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Juice from 1 lemon
For the Cream Sauce:
- 3 tbsp butter
- 2 cups milk
- 1 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in a small amount of milk
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese
Pasta of choice
Instructions
For the pesto:
- Mix all the dry ingredients in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the olive oil and lemon juice while blending.
For the cream sauce:
- Melt butter in a skillet.
- Add milk and milk-cornstarch mixture and stir until warm.
- Add cheese, and once it is melted, add pesto.
- Stir and keep warm until the pasta has been cooked. Add pasta directly to the skillet to coat in sauce.
Check out the rest of Victoria Sande’s pasta recipes!
Recipe by Victoria Sande
Styling by Anna Franklin
Photography by Dave Bryce
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