Easy Eats

I always thought pesto was some special magical sauce. But really, you just stick 5 things in a blender or food processor and you’re done. The main hurdle was the price of the cheese and the pine nuts. If you try to find pine nuts in your local grocery store, you’ll find them horribly expensive. Like a little airplane-peanut-bag size thing for $3. Costco to the rescue! There, you can get a huge 24 oz bag that has lasted us for 4 months so far for only about $7. If you don’t have Costco try Sam’s or BJ’s.

Ingredients:

• Large handful of pine nuts
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 bunch of basil
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• Large handful of grated parmesan cheese
• 1 lb box of your choice of pasta - rotini & penne work well.

Directions: (click on images to enlarge)

1. Start to boil a big pot o’ water.
2. Put the pine nuts in a pan on medium heat. Just shake the pan until you smell the nuts toasting and they turn golden. Don’t burn ‘em!
3. Put the olive oil and the garlic in a bowl. Nuke for 30 seconds. You should smell the garlic too now.
4. Grate your cheese (I used my trusty microplane grater).
5. Stick everything into your food processor/blender and whir until it’s thick and only slighlty grainy.
6. Stick your pasta the boiling water.
7. When done, drain the pasta put it back into the hot pot.
8. Spoon the pesto sauce on top of the pasta and stir until gooey and aromatic.
9. Top with more parmesan cheese if you want.

Basil	Step 2	Step 3
Step 4	Step 5	Step 5
Step 8	Step 9

Cost:
As a college student, this was pretty important. Fresh basil, pine nuts, and parmesan cheese are all pretty expensive. The basil, we actually bought at the Farmer’s Market for $2, but we also grow our own in the garden. The pine nuts as mentioned previously were $7 for the whole bad, and I bet we have 8 pesto-portions in there. So $1 for the pine nuts if you buy in bulk.

The parmesan cheese we also buy at Costco. Instead of the Parmigiano Reggiano, we buy the American Parmesan - which is the same stuff made in American instead of Italy and aged about 2/3rds as long. It also costs about 2/3rds as much. We can barely test the difference, it’s still nutty and delicious. We freeze half of it until we need it. It lasts about a month or two during regular use for topping pastas, bread, etc. So I’d say $1 for the cheese, although it was probably less. Add in another dollar for the pasta, and 50 cents for the oil and garlic, and you’ve a total of $5.50 for 3-4 servings of pasta.

Final comments:
This is a great pseudo-fancy meal when you have no time. Since we bought in bulk we always have the cheese and pine nuts around. You just need to pick up some basil at the market or your backyard, and you’re good to go. Remember, I’m just a starving grad student, and to me this is good eats.