Homemade roasted red bell pepper pesto sauce

Pesto sauce

This is a kind of dish which originally comes from Genova, and some call it Pesto Genovese (Pesto alla Genovese).

Pesto sauce is made with garlic, European pine nuts, fresh basil, salt, parmesan, but, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Sardo. It is made of cow milk, and of course, the inevitable home-made olive oil.

No matter what people might tell you, it is completely different using, for example, pasta with home-made pesto, or pasta with done pesto from the store!!

After you make you are own pesto sauce it will be clear what you ate before! Don’t lose your time, make your own pesto 🙂 .

Recipe variations

Generally, when you say pesto, it usually associates you with something green. It is actually a green sauce, but it can be found in several combinations, starting with the ones less obvious to us, in taste.

For example: using Parmigiano Reggiano cheese instead of Grana Padano and Pecorino Sardo, instead of Pecorino Romano. 

There is a similar sauce in France too, it is just not made with pine nuts, or any other kind of nuts. However, they also use cheese. That sauce is called „pistou“ and it is only made with basil, garlic and olive oil. They use their sauce in soups. There is soup au pistou, or in minestrone for example, but they also put it in the soup immediately before they serve it.

Then, there is also a variation of using a mixture of basil and mint instead of only basil and using walnut instead of pine nuts which are more expensive.

There is also Pesto alla calabrese pepper and red pepper and pesto alla siciliana, a Sicilian version with tomato, almond, less basil and sometimes with hot pepper.

This is our Pesto alla Srbinese 🙂

Saving

I am persistent in saving. I don’t throw away food anymore. Constantly, I use Weekly-meal-planner and Grocery-shopping-list

There was something left of this red pepper which I intended for a quick salad during the week. I won’t throw it away since I’ve already decided to make pesto with roasted red pepper that can be used in different ways.

Roasted pepper pesto

Pesto alla Srbinese

Based on the aroma coming from my house, the neighbors can conclude that we eat a lot of ajvar because we roast red pepper all the time.

However, although most of it becomes ajvar, we don’t only prepare it. This time, I am roasting some red pepper for Pesto alla Srbinese.

There are walnuts, garlic and basil (or without it) for a vegetarian pesto alla Srbinese option. For a non-vegetarian version, I use goat cheese. My version of goat cheese was with porcini mushrooms, but you can certainly make it without them.

You can switch half of red peppers with beans for a vegetarian version. It is another home-made combination of flavors, just make sure you use the white beans (the ones from the can do too).

Preparation is not difficult… put everything in blender and mix. You will only need additional 15 minutes if you don’t already have some roasted red pepper.

Options with pesto sauce

You can use for breakfast time like a top on the toast or whole wheat bread.

If you put pesto in a jar, you can keep it for up to seven days in the fridge. Your lunch during the week is guaranteed.

When you don’t have so much time for cooking during the week, you can only boil some pasta and cover with pesto, fresh basil, and parmesan cheese.

One more option is to make a dough for croissants or use puff pastry from the supermarket, then greased with pesto very thin layer, roll it and put in the oven. To have a golden-brown crust on the top the best way is to whisk the egg and cover the croissants.

On the end, you can put pesto where ever you like 🙂 .