Pesto Salad Recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Salads with pesto sauce occupy a separate niche in the culinary arts. These are he althy, tasty and satisfying dishes that can be prepared not only for the festive table, but also on a normal day - for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Most are perfect for a light snack, and some can even replace a full meal.

Preparing the pesto base

Before you choose any salad, you need to prepare the dressing. The pesto sauce consists of the following ingredients:

• 50g each of fresh basil leaves and Parmesan cheese;
• pine nuts - 2 tablespoons;
• garlic - 2 cloves;
• s alt - to taste;
• olive oil - 50 ml.

Pesto salads will have a brighter taste if the list of these products is not modified. This is a traditional dressing recipe that originated in Italy, in Genoa. The addition of other ingredients may destroy the harmony and balance that is inherent in the sauce prepared according to the original recipe.

So, first you need to wash and dry the basil leaves, then cut the cheese into small pieces, peel and cut the garlic in half. Put all this in a blender, add nuts, a little s alt and oil, and then chop. You do not need to keep the blender turned on for a long time, wanting to get the most crushed products. On the contrary, the sauce should be heterogeneous.

Caprese salad with pesto sauce

"Caprese" is a very tasty and easy-to-cook Italian salad, perhaps known all over the world. It is also called the “perfect trio”, because the dish combines tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, and together these products form an unsurpassed taste. To prepare "Caprese" according to the classic recipe, you need to prepare:

• 6 tomatoes;
• 250g mozzarella;
• 20g basil;
• 3 tablespoons pesto.

The peculiarity of this salad with pesto, mozzarella and tomatoes is that the last 2 ingredients must be cut into slices, the thickness of which will be approximately 7 mm. For everything to work out, you need to take hard tomatoes. Soft varieties simply spread on the plate when cutting. Mozzarella cheese, which is sold in "balls", is first cut across, and then in half, in even parts. Basil leaves should be washed and dried.

You will need a flat dish to serve. Slices of tomatoes and cheese are laid out on it, alternating them with each other. In this case, the next product leans on the previous one (this is clearly seen inlettuce photos). Top the salad with pesto sauce and decorate the center with basil leaves.

Warm pesto potato salad

This Mediterranean-style appetizer is very tasty and satisfying. Warm potato salad with pesto can serve as an independent dish or side dish. Prepared from the following products:

• 6 quail eggs;
• 400g potatoes;
• 3 tablespoons canned green peas;
• spices to taste.

Boil potatoes in their skins, peel and cut into 2 parts. This must be done until it cools down so that the salad is warm. Put the potato halves in a bowl, add the peas, then a couple of tablespoons of pesto, spices if desired, and mix well. When the salad is on serving plates, top with boiled quail eggs, cut in half, and decorate the dish with a sprig of basil.

Salad with tuna and Adyghe cheese with sauce

This dish also turns out to be unusual and incredibly tasty. This pesto salad recipe, like Caprese, is good because it is quick and fairly easy to prepare. This requires the following products:

• 1 tablespoon pesto;
• 150 g Adyghe cheese;
• 250g cherry tomatoes;
• 1 can canned tuna in natural juice;
• spices and garlic to taste.

From a jar oftuna, you need to drain the liquid, put the fish in a bowl, then add seasonings, garlic and sauce, mix everything well. Cut Adyghe cheese into cubes, put in a salad bowl. Mix carefully. Cut the tomatoes in half, put in a bowl. The salad must be mixed as carefully as possible so as not to crush the cherry.

Pesto salads are not the only dish prepared with such an interesting dressing. We offer you to watch a video recipe that tells how to cook chicken fillet with pesto sauce, cherry tomatoes and mozzarella. The result will be a very tasty full-fledged dish, which is perfect for dinner with the family, and for meeting guests.