It is really expensive to buy sun-dried tomato pesto sauce bottles off the shelves of supermarkets. It costs more than five dollars just for a small bottle of the sauce. Worse is that I cannot even make one and a half serving worth of spaghetti with a small bottle. Buying these sauces for meals is a form of luxury that I indulge in only about once or twice a year.
Honestly, it isn’t really cheap to be making my own tomato pesto sauce at home too. However, there still is some cost-savings involved because for the same amount of money that I spend on buying these ready-made sauces, I could prepare about thrice as much sauce and even store them at home for use later. It’s probably a good Christmas gift to make for friends and family members too.
Ingredients:
- Sun-dried tomatoes: 2 bottles (400g)
- Parmesan cheese: 125g
- Garlic: 2 cloves, peeled
- Basil leave: 2 cups, washed
- Lemon juice: 1/2 of 1 small lemon
- Extra virgin olive oil: 1/2 cup + extra for storage
- Salt: 2 tsp
- Ground blackpepper: 1 tsp
Method:
- Blend all the ingredients together till a smooth paste forms.
- To serve: Add into spaghetti as main serving sauce. There is no need to add in any more condiments (salt, oil) thereafter.
- To store: Spoon into bottles till almost full. Top up remaining space with olive oil for freezing or storage in the fridge.
Tricks:
- Add pine nuts to blend with the sauce to give a nutty flavour. This would make the colour of the pesto sauce a lot creamier and lighter too.
- Refer to ‘Making Basil Pesto Sauce The Nuttiest Way‘ to learn how to make the original basil pesto sauce.
Serving:
5 small bottles (for about 10 servings of spaghetti)
