You can buy ready-to-eat pesto in almost every supermarket or food shop in almost every quality from crappy to super-organic-high-quality. The cheap ones are normally mixed with artificial stuff and ingredients no-one really wants to see in their food...even in the more expensive pesto. On food markets you'll often find vendors selling their own pesto at a juicy price.

In the end nothing gets close to your own home-made pesto, if you know how it's done. An Italian chef showed me how. It's much easier and quicker than you think at first. Actually, when the water for the pasta is heating up, I prepare the my pesto, and I am finished when the water is boiling. I put in the pasta and no 10 minutes later I'm having a great vegetarian / vegan dish in front of me!

Pesto sauce can be simply split up in a formula and then left to your culinary creativity. It's easy as this:

(Herbs + Nuts + Garlic + (Salt + Pepper) + Vegan Cheese + x) * Oil = Pesto 

So let's get it on! Here is my specialty: the awesome rucola pesto, which found its way into the Miconi Family Recipe Collection. This recipe serves 1 - 2 persons.

Get a handful of rucola. I prefer to buy organic rucola. You can get organic rucola at the supermarket or - for a higher price - at an organic supermarket near you. For me, the best money-for-value solution is to buy my veggies at a farmers' market in my hometown. The farmers located on the outskirts of many cities come once or twice a week to town to sell their harvest. It's a good chance to buy almost organic food for less money than in the organic supermarket. 

Wash the rucola and let it drain for a couple of minutes.

Get a small handful of nuts and one clove of garlic ready.

Peel the garlic and chop the garlic and the nuts roughly.

Put the ingredients into a pot and add salt and pepper to taste. The salt and the garlic will enhance the flavour of the other ingredients. Note: What tastes too salty when it's cold, will taste less salty to perfect when it's warm over the pasta. 

Add quality olive oil to taste. I chose an organic one extra vergine (cold pressed) from Italy with a slightly fruity taste. I took 8 table spoons for this recipe. Take less and the pesto will be more creamy. Take more and the pesto will be more oily. 

You can spend lots of money on high-quality olive oils. Beside of the herbs, the oil is the most important thing in pesto - the soul of it. There are lots of great quality olive oils out there at a reasonable price. Try some of them until you find the right one for you. It WILL pay off!

A handheld blender will turn everything in your pot to the thing of your desire: pesto. Take your time for it. 

You may add some x to it - an ingredient giving your pesto a special twist. I normally use a xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx...well, it should remain a family secret.

Have we missed something? Yes! The cheese is missing. The classic recipe normally says to add some grated (pecorino or parmesan or grana padano) cheese right into the pesto. I don't. I've had some unpleasant experience with pesto from the supermarket. The cheese clotted and the whole dish didn't look nicely anymore. After finishing my meal, the plate was a mess and it took some efforts to clean it while washing up - fail!

If I like to have my pasta with cheese, I buy a small piece of fresh parmesan. You might know the alternative of grated parmesan of other cheese in a small plastic bag. My opinion: You can forget about almost all of them! I found myself a good brand I'm using when I'm just to lazy to grate my own cheese. Then topping my pasta with cheese works quite well! P.S.: Most of the time I skip the cheese. 

Without the cheese you have a vegan product. There is vegan cheese you could use (mostly made from potato starch), but I do not dig it. Period. 

In a small, sealed glass you can keep your fresh pesto a couple of days in the fridge. Make sure, there's always some oil on top of the surface. 

Instead of just tossing your pasta or veggies in pesto, you might also spread pesto on your bread. Yummy!

In case you need some more creativity boost, watch out for some niche books on pesto. The one or another is really amazing. 

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