Easy Almond Pesto

Used different ingredients. This recipe really can be adjusted, and probably should be, depending on your taste. We used about 1/2 a cup of toasted pine nuts, added a tbl of shaved parm., added a bit of mint and played with the olive oil till it was the right texture. But this recipe shows you all the basic elements...adding sundried tomatos is fun too, or olvies.  -  29 Sep 2008

Used different ingredients. Excellent! Loved this one & easy to make too. One thing about the almonds that I really like instead of the pine nuts is the COST! The toasted almonds were very tasty & so much less $$. Also...a tip on toasting the nuts, don't bother with the oven, simply heat a (dry) non stick heavy frypan on the stove, and saute' the nuts until toasted with no butter or oil. They are super easy & quick to do this way. Great recipe!  -  29 Sep 2008

I tried halving this recipe and ran into difficulties. In particular, with half the material, after the initial blender pulse, all the material -much more compact- now could lay beneath the blades. Additional blending didn't do anything. I had to manually raise of the material and try to blender again, but this achieved little because it quickly went below the blades again, and in the end I was left with pesto with many practically unchopped garlic and nuts. This is posted here as an unrated review to warn others that before reducing the size of the recipe, think about the size, shape, and abilities of your food processor/blender. (With more material, I think that the convection in my blender would chop everything without difficulty.)  -  29 Sep 2008