Seven Day Filipino Vegetarian Meals (What I Ate at Home for a Week)
Poor Man’s Pesto Made from Basil We Planted from Seeds
We reaped what we sowed, and our pesto cravings have been satisfied.
Those who follow me on Instagram will remember this post from roughly two months ago:
My Instagram post of basil seedlings we planted last March.
I’m happy to say that the basil plants are now all grown, and although they suffered from an attack of lace bugs (at least that’s what I guess the little pests are), we still harvested enough herbs to make pesto sauce for the entire family.
The traditional pesto recipe calls for pine nuts, but I’m a believer in cooking the “Cham-cham” way sometimes, especially when it comes to pasta sauce (chamba-chamba, tsamba-tsamba, or chance-chance, meaning you cook by relying on luck to produce something that’s good, hehe), so even with a lack of nuts, we proceeded with our pesto project.
Our poor man’s pesto sauce consisted of four ingredients:
- Basil leaves (chopped as finely as you are capable)
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh garlic cloves (grated)
- Parmesan cheese (grated)
I’m not even providing the amounts of each ingredient we used, because the Cham-cham school of cooking stresses that you use all ingredients according to your preference, and not to any other person’s rules. At any rate, I am of the opinion that you can never use too much basil, or olive oil, or even garlic and Parmesan cheese for that matter.
For the sake of those who don’t like too much garlic though (but why, for the life of me, I’ll never understand), you might want to hold back a bit on the garlic. My estimate is half a clove of fresh garlic per person (although personally, I want at least 2 cloves for myself, haha). But like I said, do it according to preference!
Just mix everything in a bowl, and use on any cooked pasta that you like. We had fusilli, and it was perfect because the grooves in the pieces were superb for lodging the roughly chopped leaves. If you have a food processor, by all means use it!
I suggest serving with hot sauce or chili flakes, or for those who are non-vegetarians, you can top with a little bit of Spanish-style sardines.
Bon appetit!