Basil Pesto

Ingredients

• 60 g basil, leaves only
• 40 g pine nuts
• 1 garlic clove
• 50 g parmesan, finely grated
• 120 ml good olive oil
• sea salt

Method

1. Toast the pine nuts

   Toast them in a dry pan over a low heat until patchily gold, shaking often, then let them cool completely. They carry on cooking off the heat and go from gold to bitter in under a minute.

   4 min

2. Pound the aromatics

   Pound the garlic with a pinch of salt to a paste, then work in the basil a handful at a time. Use a pestle and mortar if you have one — a blade blender bruises basil and turns it dark and grassy.

3. Build the sauce

   Work in the pine nuts, then the parmesan, then trickle in the oil while stirring. Adding oil last stops it splitting into a greasy slick.

4. Season and store

   Taste for salt — parmesan varies a lot. Store under a film of oil in the fridge, where it keeps a week; exposed to air the surface goes black within hours.