Cilantro recipes for pasta sauce
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And some of these cilantro recipes feature ingredients that you would not expect in a pesto sauce.
In the traditional pesto sauce recipe, the basic ingredients are:
- pine nuts
- basil leaves
- garlic
- olive oil
- salt.
Any variations would mostly be in the amounts of each ingredient used. And such variations would not be major, because the consistency of the pesto sauce would otherwise be altered.
Cilantro pesto, however, is not such a classic recipe and so there are many different versions of cilantro pesto. I have come across versions of cilantro recipes for pesto sauce using ingredients such as onion, chilli and even yoghurt.
This reminds me of fusion cooking... Well, nothing wrong with experimentation. But for now, let's just stick to a more traditional cliantro pesto.
Cilantro recipes for pesto sauce
- 1/4 cup pine nuts
- 1 cup fresh cilantro / coriander leaves, hard stems removed
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup oilve oil
Easy way...
- Lightly toast the pine nuts in a dry pan, over low heat, until golden brown. You need to watchful and make sure the heat is low, as pine nuts burn easily. Leave to cool.
- Place pine nuts and other dry ingredients into a food processor and blend for about 20 to 30 seconds, until fine.
- With the processor blade still running, slowly add olive oil in a thin stream, until a paste is formed.
Handmade pesto sauce recipe
- Lihgtly toast the pine nuts, as above, and allow to cool.
- In a mortar or suribachi (a Japanese grinding bowl), crush the garlic and sea salt. Add pine nut and coriander or cilantro leaves and continue to grind. Mix in the grated cheese and pepper to taste. Finally, add the olive oil a little at a time.
You will probably need to hand grind for about 15 to 20 minutes, and the mixture will not be as smooth or as even as what you get with a food processor. I would normally prepare pesto sauce and cilantro recipes such as this with a food processor. It's so much easier.
But if I am in a relaxed mood, the handmade way produces a somewhat more rustic pesto sauce. And all that had work gives a certain sense of satisfaction.
Cilantro vs basil
Cilantro is also known as coriander or Chinese parsley and is widely available throughout Asia. In Singapore where I live, a sizeable bunch of coriander can be bought for under $1 (and not too long ago for as little as 20 cents). Because of its wide availability and familiar taste, cilantro recipes for pesto might be more suitable for Asians than the traditional pesto sauce made with basil leaves.
Very little of it is eaten in Singapore. A bowl of noodle soup, for example, might be garnished with the equivalent of just two to three tiny cilantro / coriander leaves. The herb is eaten a lot more, however, in places like Thailand and Vietnam. When I was in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) some years back, I bought a sausage from a night market stall and was surprised it came with two generous-size sprigs each of coriander, basil and spring onions.
Basil, too, is eaten much more in Vietnam, Thailand and other Indochinese states. The basil that is commonly available in Singapore is of a different variety. This is used in the coconut curry dish called laksa and also called "laksa leaf". It has long, pointed leaves and a stronger taste compared to regular basil. The leaf is normally cut very finely and only a tiny pinch is added to each bowl of laksa.
The Thais, Vietnamese and others have another type of basil called sweet basil. This has a more rounded leaf and I believe it is closer to the type used in Italian pesto sauce. This is what I would use for regular basil pesto.
Click here for a traditional basil-based pesto sauce recipe rather than cilantro recipes.
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