Pesto for Pasta (Filippo Berio Classic Pesto)

Member Name: stevepeto

Product:	Filippo Berio Classic Pesto
Date:	12/01/09 (230 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Flavour, Aroma, Colour

Disadvantages: none

Filippo Berio Classic Pesto

Pasta is such a wholesome and versatile ingredient to make a meal with. Go into any supermarket and you will see rows upon rows of various pasta sauces from various companies and most of these will make you a delicious meal in a relatively short time period. However something that is often overlooked as a pasta sauce is Pesto. It comes in many varieties although the variety that I am reviewing here is the "standard" green pesto, this one from Filippo Berio.

The 190Gr glass jar that I am reviewing contains: Fresh Ligurian Basil (32%), olive oil composed of refined oils and virgin olive oils (23%), peanut oil, grana padano cheese, cashew nuts, potatoes, salt, sugar, pecorino cheese, pine kernels, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and acidity regulator E575. another thing to mention is that the website lists 42% black olives although there is no mention of the olives on the label.

The product can actually be seen through the glass and shows as a tempting blend of differing shades of green and looks almost paste like. The label itself is green like the extra virgin olive oil, however although the ingredients show that Extra Virgin Olive Oil is used it also lists refined oils too. The product also has a long shelf life, the jar I have here (Jan 09) has a best before date of July 2010 although once opened you need to use within two weeks so I would suggest planning a couple of meals using pesto within that time or you may find that the product will go off.

One thing I would suggest if you have never tried Pesto before, or even for those that have (although you probably do this anyway) is when you open a fresh, new jar of pesto, breathe in through the nose and savour the aroma that hits your nostrils, it will give you an idea of the kick that this will give to your bland ol pasta.

When cracking open the lid the main smell to me is of pine kernels and cheese, although more inclined towards the pine kernels and it will essentially look like a green paste that you spoon onto freshly cooked pasta (mainly) although does have other use on other foods too. Yes it can be as simple as spooning it out over your chosen meal and stirring in.

A couple of suggestions for using this are the following. Cook up some pasta such as Fusilli or Twists, after you have drained the water put the pasta back in the saucepan and add a good dollop of pesto and stir in, add more pesto as required until you have enough that isn't saturated but nicely coated by pesto.

Serve this pasta with a nice Italian salad (which you can get pre packed from any supermarket), some cherry tomatoes and lightly toasted pine nuts.

The second suggestion is really simple, if you cook pizza (be it home made or frozen) just dot about 4 or 5 smallish pools of pesto before you put it in the oven, this gives a great flavour to pizzas although seems to work best for me on pizzas that are not overloaded with meat.

Nutrition wise Pesto contains a lot of fat, although I do believe that that is because of the Olive Oil it contains and Olive Oil is of course fairly healthy, as is Basil, there is also allergy advise on the label which states: contains nuts, milk and egg derivatives, so anyone allergic to these should avoid

Nutritional Information values per 100ml

Energy 2097kj - 508kcal
Protein 4.9g
Carbohydrate - 7.3g
Fat - 50.8g

© This review is entirely my own work but may have been cross posted elsewhere. MAY also be published under the name sjp1966 on Ciao UK and Ciao US.

Summary: a great way to put some life into pasta