Sun-dried Tomato Pesto

I like sun-dried tomato pesto best on a sandwich, with steak strips. Last time we had it with sour dough bread and medium rare beef tenderloin. Basically, it tastes how I imagine heaven-food. We often eat this when Samuel is visiting, because the steak usually makes up for having a meat-free lunch (which, coincidentally happens often when he visits. Sam be man. Sam want meat. Meatless food not meal).

Not that I blame him I guess – - steak is GOOD. SO GOOD.

But back to the Pesto – this recipe is quite flexible. Go for the texture you want and taste, taste, taste! I’ve made it about 3 times with different amounts of this and that which I had on hand, and it has been good every time.

(Generally based on this)
Ingredients:

• 1++ cups sun-dried tomatoes
• 2 cups loosely packed fresh basil
• 9 cloves pressed garlic
• 3/4 cup chopped pine nuts and or chopped almonds ( i did roughly half and half, but saved some pine nuts to throw in at the end so they would stay whole)
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup red wine (experiment with the wine/vinegar, you might want like 1/4 cup of each if you don’t like tang or vinegar)
• 1/2 can or so of tomatoes.
• 1 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Place sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl and cover with warm water for 5+ minutes. Drain and pat dry.
   
2. Desperately wish you had a powerful fancy blender. Go and buy a mini chopper.
   
3. Discover that the chopper isn’t powerful enough to work on sun dried tomatoes anyway. Chop up the tomatoes as finely as you can with a sharp knife. (or until you’re bored). With a food processor/mini chopper/emulsion blender/regular blender combine all ingredients (except Parmesan) until it smooth-ish and well blended.
   
4. Then just stir in the Parmesan cheese. Also, if you planned ahead like me, add the rest of the pine nuts whole, because they are both yummy and pretty.
   
5. Taste it on something – baguette, pasta, steak sandwich.

Further Reading:
Apparently there is a small chance they you’ll get a bitter tasting mouth if you eat a bad batch of pine nuts. Thankfully it hasn’t happened to me yet!
Have an overwhelming supply of fresh tomatoes? Roast your own.
Pionner Woman cooks perfect beef tenderloin. Yum!

- zoe