Ligurian pesto

Wash thoroughly in cold running water the basil leaves and let them air-dry, stretched out on a towel.

Put them in a mortar, dry, add the salt and the garlic cloves and started to pound with the pestle.

Do not beat with pestle, but crushed with force, without giving shots in mortar.

Add a little cheese at a time alternating the two types and, when you have a homogeneous compound, take down the wire olive oil stirring with a wooden spatula until mixture is smooth and creamy.

It is a mistake to remove the pesto from the mortar to add oil, in fact part of the fragrance of Basil stays on mortar walls; then adding the oil in the same pan, this absorbs all the aroma (to get a good pesto is very important to the quality of the Basil, which should be, as riccio and the quality of the oil, which should be always chosen extra-vergine).

Wishing you can also prepare the pesto with the help of Blender, which simplifies preparedness and can give good average results; in this case you put the oil, basil, garlic and salt in a blender and transferred the mixture into a bowl where you will add the cheese.

Blend for a few minutes, making sure the pesto becomes foamy.

Pesto is a cold sauce, but using a hot, putting it in stews or by adding it to the pasta is dry, hot, having stretched with a few tablespoons of boiling water.

Variation: you can add lightly toasted pine nuts; or walnut kernels and milk curd.