Bright Green Pesto and Its Many Uses

• 2 cups tightly packed, fresh basil leaves
• Salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons lightly toasted pine nuts or untoasted chopped walnuts
• 13 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, halved, green shoots removed
• 13 to 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

1. Bring a medium-size saucepan full of water to a boil while you rinse basil leaves.
2. Fill a bowl with ice water and place it next to the saucepan with a skimmer close by (a Chinese skimmer is good for this).
3. When water comes to a boil, salt generously and add basil leaves.
4. Push them down into the water with the back of a skimmer to submerge, count to five, then remove immediately with skimmer and transfer to ice water.
5. Drain and squeeze out excess water.
6. Place pine nuts or walnuts in a food processor and process until finely ground.
7. Add blanched basil and kosher salt to taste (I use 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) and process until finely chopped.
8. With machine running, slowly add olive oil and continue to process for a full minute, or until the mix is reduced to a fine puree.
9. Transfer to a bowl.
10. You should have about 1/2 cup of puree .
11. When you are ready to use the pesto, puree garlic in a mortar and pestle, or put through a garlic press, and stir into the pesto (or if using a mortar and pestle, add the pureed basil to the mashed garlic in mortar and work garlic and pesto together with pestle).
12. Add Parmesan and stir in.
13. The pesto will condense when you add the cheese, so even though youve added a half-cup of cheese to the puree, you will end up with about 2/3 cup of pesto.
14. Follow the instructions in recipes for thinning out with water.

tightly packed, salt, nuts, extravirgin olive oil, garlic, parmesan

Taken from cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016791 (may not work)