Pesto sauce

The most popular pesto sauce is one made with basil, and I'll include a recipe for that below, but there are infinitely many ways to make a great pesto sauce, so there will be a number of variations below as well. They can be made ahead of time, frozen for a good long time, and are great to pop out for a quick week-night meal, used as dips, or also used to stuff meet such as boneless chicken breasts, or pork chops.

Basil Pesto

2 cups of fresh, clean basil leaves, packed tightly
6 large garlic cloves
1/4 cup of pine nuts (walnuts can be substituted, though they don't taste quite as good)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated parmigiano cheese

It's best to make this in a food processor, though a blender can work with a little coaxing.

Put the basil, garlic and pine nuts into the bowl of the food processor and start the blade running. Drizzle in the olive oil a bit at a time until the ingredients are well blended, and the sauce has a barely liquid quality to it. You might need less oil, but you might need a bit more -- you'll have to get a feel for this as you make it multiple times. When this is done, put it into a bowl and stir in the cheese (using the food processor to integrate the cheese can turn it gummy).

Taste it when it's done. Because of all the cheese you likely will not need any salt, but if it doesn't taste salty enough for you, add a pinch of salt. Pepper is optional -- I prefer pesto without it.

When tossing pesto with pasta or gnocchi (in my mind, there is NOTHING that goes better with pesto than gnocchi), put the uncooked pesto in the bottom of your bowl, the pasta or gnocchi on top of it, and toss. Don't put the sauce over heat as it will cause the cheese to clump up and mar the texture and flow of the sauce.

Pesto Variations

In place of, or in addition to basil, you could use Italian flat leaf parsley (NEVER use curly parsley in Italian cooking) or spinach leaves. Keep the overall proportion of leaves the same to the other ingredients, but you could combine two or three of these and make an interesting sauce.

Sundried tomatoes also make a delicious pesto. If you use them, add 1 and 2/3 cup of sundried tomatoes and 1/3 cup of packed basil leaves. If you are using sundried tomatoes that are not packed in oil, then put them in hot water for about 5 minutes and squeeze out the excess water before you put them into the processor. In either case, you will likely need a little bit less olive oil to bring the sauce to the right texture.

Other options (either in whole or in part) include crimini mushrooms, roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts.