Oh, yes. Marcella Hazan's, from The Classic Italian Cookbook. If you want to freeze a batch, do not add the cheese or butter; beat them in when you thaw it.

2 cups fresh basil leaves
½ cup olive oil
2 Tb. pine nuts [I use more, about 3 Tb.]
2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed and peeled
1 tsp. salt [I leave this out; the cheese adds enough saltiness]
â cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 Tb. freshly grated Romano cheese
3 Tb. butter, softened to room temperature

1. Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, chopped garlic, and an ample pinch of salt in the blender and mix at high speed. [Or processor but I find I like the blender result best.]
2. When the ingredients are evenly blended, pour into a bowl and beat in the two grated cheeses by hand. (This is not much work, and results in a better texture and better flavor than you get when you mix in the cheese in the blender.) When the cheese has been evenly incorporated into the other ingredients, beat in the softened butter.
3. Before spooning the pesto over pasta, add to it a tablespoon or two of the hot water in which the pasta was cooked.

"My son says my mom's pesto is too oily."

If it's not oil, it's not pesto. That's my opinion anyway. Maybe your son just doesn't like pesto. That's his right.

Jim

I don't measure my oil in pesto....and don't use any butter.
Here's what I do.
I mix it in the cuisinart...
Toast 1/4 cup pine nuts in a 300 oven until fragrant and starting to get golden.
While that is toasting I grate
4 oz of fresh parmesan reggiano into the cusinart using the fine grating blade. Change the blade to the "S' metal blade.
Then toss in
3 or 4 cloves of garlic...3 if they are huge cloves 4 or 5 if smaller. Add the pine nuts and
2 cups of packed fresh basil leaves, washed and spun or patted dry with paper towel.
Place into the processor and turn the motor on and with the motor running slowly pour in EVOO until the consistancy you like.
I like mine fairly thick, so add less oil...it's easy enough to add oil when you are tossing it with the pasta, and I often add pesto to things like salad dressing or soup and use it as a spread on bruschetta, so a little less oil may be better.
Linda c

I love this one I took from an Italian cooking show. Once I made it I never looked for another recipe.

Pesto - from Italian TV Cook Program

4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 teasp salt
1/2 teasp f.g. pepper
1/2 cup parmesan grated
1/2 cup pine nuts (2 small jars)
teasp water

Process in food processor, adding oil slowly until all is creamy.

SharonCb

I like my pesto to be deep green. Unfortunately, the stuff one adds to pesto tends to lighten it up. So I toast my pine nuts as dark as I dare and go easy on the cheese. I also don't usually add butter, but use more olive oil.

Maybe try using less pesto with your son's pasta? A small amount of rich-flavoured pesto, thinly tossed with the pasta, shouldn't seem too oily.

The picture Sharon posted is beautiful.

I forgot......
I also of late have been adding a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice to the pesto when I make it....it keeps the color a lovely green and I like the flavor it adds.
Linda C

When the recipe calls for two cups of basil leaves, do you pack them in the cup tightly, loosely or somewhere in the middle?

I guess I do somewhere in the middle -- fairly packed, but not cramming in every possible gram of basil. Marcella also suggests that because the leaves of American basil vary so much in size, you should tear each leaf into two or three pieces so they pack better for measuring.

And... I know some people disagree with this but in my opinion, if the basil has flowered, the pesto will not be nearly as good.

Oh dear, some of my basil has flowered. I tried to keep it pinched, but I couldn't keep up. I better get to the pesto ASAP! Now my problem is which recipe to use.

I use a different method for making pesto. I put all the ingredients except the toasted pine nuts and grated Parmesan cheese (I never use Romano) and process that together. Then I add the pine nuts and pulse a few times so that they get chopped but not puréed. Then I move everything to a bowl and stir in the grated Parmesan. I've been doing this for many years and was surprised when I learned that most people purée the pine nuts - I prefer them with a bit of crunch. I wonder if I'm the only one who makes pesto this way as I first started making it without a recipe and purely by instinct and memory.

Lars

Lars....next time i'll try it like that...
And I pack my leaves tightly. I find that while I am removing each leaf from the stem, they wilt and I can get more in the cup..LOL!
And sometimes when frost is on it's way, I will sub half flat leaf parsley for half the basil...yummy but slightly different.

By the way, I am very envious of whoever is harvesting their garden's basil now.

Here in the Pac NW, my garden looks still-born. I think today was like the third sunny day since the start of spring - that may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

John, here in L.A. (near the beach, at least) it's been quite cool this season so far, but my yard is fairly sunny and so I've been getting small amounts of basil but not enough for a batch of pesto. I have some Thai basil plants that are 1-1/2" high and already trying to bloom. I feel like my garden is still-born also, which I blame on my planting seeds instead of plants. I would take pictures, but it's too pathetic. At least the citrus are doing well. It's been in the upper 60s when I get home for work and by 8:00 when it starts to get dark, it's too cold to stay outside without changing clothes. It was warmer in February. Last season's basil lasted through part of January, and so I may get some new plants at the end of summer for the fall and winter crop.

Lars

For all you basil harvesters, do you only use the perfect leaves? If it has a small hole, will you still use it?
I've been only using the perfect leaves but even on three plants I am wasting a lot. Maybe I'm too particular?

The holes are most likely from slugs...I do use ecosense slug repellent but I still get a few if it wears out before I get around to reapplying the stuff.

Since the basil is getting pureed, it doesn't matter if the leaves had holes. Save the perfect leaves for a salad or garnish.

On the son who thinks pesto is too oily, does he like tomatoes?

A pesto variant I also love is "pesto a la trappanese", it has very little oil, and every kid I've served it to has loved it, unless they don't like tomatoes, in which case I stretch them on the rack until they like tomatoes and then we try again.

Basically just:
- Tomatoes, let's say five or six romas or the equivalent volume of cherry, whatever is tastiest. Medium dice, I don't bother to peel or seed.
- Basil, about a cup to start. Chopped is fine but chiffonaded is prettier.
- Some almonds, chopped or slivered, toasted is nice.
- Garlic, a couple of cloves, minced.
- A small amount of olive oil, start with 1/2 TBSP.
- Salt and pepper.
- Pasta, I personally like corkscrew pasta, cooked then drained and cooled to room temp. Since there is not much oil in the pesto and it hasn't been pureed, it doesn't ''stick'' to noodles, you want a pasta with plenty of crevices to hold the pesto.
- Parmesan cheese.

Cut up the tomatoes and basil by hand. By hand, with a proper knife, not with a food processor or blender. Toss together, add the garlic, almonds, oil, salt and pepper. Toss with the pasta. Add the cheese now or earlier, as you prefer.

Oh, does your pesto a la trappanese look disturbingly like stomach contents? That's because you zapped it in a food processor. By hand, I tell you.

"in which case I stretch them on the rack until they like tomatoes and then we try again."
Sounds like a wonderful technique to me! hahaha
In England we have a resident italian chef on TV (Gino d'Acampo - very dinky!) who says you can make pesto with whatever you like. I'm not a great fan of pinenuts so I use almonds (which are also a lot cheaper here!).

Pine nuts are expensive and do not have the Omega's that walnuts do. Walnuts are a great alternative to using pine nuts. The nuts are primarily for the 'crunch' in the pesto. Also, I would use a good Parmigiano-Reggiano instead of regular parm cheese. While I cut back to save $$ with some ingredients, I always prefer to use good quality cheeses that are not in the lunch meat isle. LOL

For those that want an alternative, I saw an episode with Sunny Anderson on the cooking channel, using spinach in place of the basil, though I have not tried it, I just love the aroma of basil!

I'm lazy- I chop or tear everything up by hand and add it to the pasta dish individually. I usually don't have enough basil to make tons of pesto anyway.

I absolutely agree with Mangomoon on using walnuts. I used them once a very long time ago when I couldn't get pine nuts, and I realized I preferred the flavor, so now I use them on purpose.

A few years ago I started blanching the basil, a tip I picked up from Martha Stewart, to keep the pesto from darkening after being frozen, and it works beautifully. I do it all the time now.

I made spinach pesto once and wasn't that excited by it, although I'm open to trying other herbs and greens if anyone has a great recipe.

My lightbulb idea for freezing pesto without the mess of spooning it into ice-cube trays--I posted this once before--is to spread the pesto into a baking pan (size of pan dependent on how much pesto you have) and freezing it that way. Then take it out and cut the frozen block into little cubes, whatever size or sizes you want. Easy peasy.

Pine nuts really are not there just for the texture. They have a distinctive piney, resinous taste. I don't care for it much on its own, but it adds something unique to pesto. That's not to say that something very good can't be made with walnuts, but the taste will be very different.

I use the recipe from the Silver Palate cookbook- or maybe its the Good Times Silver Palate book. I make batches every year and freeze it! makes winter so cozy.

We just finished making garlic-scape pesto with the scapes we got from our CSA. It's absolutely delicious! Now I have to go scavenging to see if I can get some more to make a batch for freezing. Tonight's batch is getting dolloped on pizza, if the dough ever warms up.