Well, at least I recently became hip to it. I’d had it before, but it tasted a bit like grass. Maybe that was because it was homemade. After my first taste, it was many years before I tried it again. The most recent taste has me hooked.
I never thought I’d say that Stouffer’s frozen entrees introduced me to a tasty dish that was relatively new to me. I was buying some frozen dinners for those lazy evenings, and happened upon “rigatoni with roasted white meat chicken”. That sounded good and it didn’t have alfredo in the title which was a welcome change. I did not read the smaller type under the product description that said “roasted chicken breasttossed with rigatoni pasta in a basil pesto sauce” until after having eaten it.
The parmesan, romano, basil, chicken and pasta make a superb combination. This is the first pesto I’ve tried that I liked, are they all this good? Has anyone tried this particular item? Am I just very easily impressed? Rarely do I encounter a mixture of herbs in a frozen dish that makes me salivate. Any other similar items out there?
My guess would be the people who made it got some basil that wasn’t that good. What you had the second time is what pesto is supposed to be like. Upscale supermarkets sometimes sell good pesto in little plastic tubs.
I think I also “got” pesto through Stouffer’s or some similar product after never liking it previously. I haven’t had it in a while - there’s a situation I need to correct - but I really like the stuff now.
I’m just hoping that someone with more discerning tastes than I, who has tried this product ( possibly unlikey), could weigh in on the product in question.
Make yer’ own…buy a mortar and pestle (always a good investment anyway) and buy fresh basil in season. I will allow you to buy pine-nuts in a packet, but only because I am feeling generous tonight.
I’m quite fond of sun-dried tomato pesto. I found it years ago while I was desperately scouring the grocery store for something I was allowed to eat after my nutritionist put me on a two week induction phase that is similar to Atkins (but tweaked a bit to allow fruits and fibre). I wanted to put something tasty on my little strips of steak that tasted so bland beside my piles of salad… I found this stuff in a jaw, thought it sounded okay, though I wasn’t sure if I liked pesto, but all the ingrediants were things I was allowed to have, so what the hell. It was better than a boring couple of steak strips with nothing on them, right?
Good lord, flavour. I fried my steak and slathered that pesto crap all over them, good healthy dollops of it, and I was licking the stuff off my plate by the end of it.
Then again, I could have just been thrilled by the fact that I could have something with flavour to it after a long period of blandness. But I certainly remember it fondly. The sun-dried tomatoes make it quite zesty. Maybe you could give that stuff a try? Tomato and basil, you can’t really go wrong, right?
I recall hearing years ago that pre-made pesto is not really pesto at all because to meet health standards it has to be pasteurised at nearly boiling point, so unlike real pesto it is a cooked product but with the same ingredients.
If you do buy premade, I recommend Classico-brand Traditional Basil Pesto. It tastes, IME, the closest to the good homemade stuff. If it’s not available, make sure you read the ingredients of whatever you do end up buying, and don’t get anything that has almonds instead of pine nuts; that stuff is awful.
Yep, I got that Stouffer’s entree as well (having had pesto before and liked it) and it was just fine. Someday though, get fresh cheese tortellini and toss it with upscale pesto from the snooty foods section. Wonderful. I see that you are sick of alfredo, but alfredo mixed with pesto makes a nice variation on the creamy.
I know that sometimes spinach is added to pesto both to brighten the green color and possibly to stretch the more expensive basil. I can see how the addition of too much spinach would make a pesto taste grassy rather than basil-y. Maybe this is what happened.
Yes, real pesto is to die for. If you’re overwhelmed with basil from your garden in summer, a good way to utilize it is a big patch o’pesto. There’s a type of basil from Genoa that has small, spicy intensely flavored leaves that makes particularly good stuff, but I can’t remember the name of it right now.
Costco sells a good pesto sauce in their refrigerated section. I also love love love the basil pesto dish at Nothing but Noodles, if you have one of those near you.
I usually mince the garlic (fairly large minces) and leave the fresh basil in fairly big pieces to take advantage of the color. Add diced tomato and olive oil and stick it in the fridge for a half hour. When the chilled pesto hits the hot pasta, the flavor explodes.
We grow our own basil - and it’s wonderful. But our pesto is frankly not particularly better than the storebought stuff. It’s not worth the trouble.
I’ve never thought so. Traditional pesto is not necessarily exclusively made from pine nuts - walnuts at least are quite commonly used, and in my opinion just as good.
Ingredients: 1 pinch coarse sea salt
60 small or 30 large fresh basil leaves, dried
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tablespoons pignoli, lightly toasted
2 tablespoons Pecorino Romano, fresh, finely grated
2 tablespoons Parmigiano-Reggiano, fresh, finely grated
3 - 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Directions: In a mortar:
Start with salt and few leaves of basil. Crush with a pestle, keep adding leaves a few at a time, then add garlic and pound until the mixture becomes a paste. Add pignoli and work into a paste, then add cheese and slowly pour the olive oil. Work all into a creamy consistency.
In a blender:
Add basil, salt and garlic. Work into a paste, add pignoli and slowly pour half of the olive oil. Add cheese and the remaining olive oil. Blend until it becomes a homogenous, creamy paste.
