Introduction: Cherry Tomato Pesto Recipe

Great way to use those cherry tomatoes that are overflowing in your garden right now! A cherry tomato pasta recipe but not the typical kind. Let's make a pesto with cherry tomatoes instead.

We have a number of other pesto recipe videos:

GardenFork Pesto Recipe Videos

Step 1: Watch Our Pesto Video First!

A big thank you to Lidia Bastianich for the inspiration for this. Something I learned while working on this, its best to process the almonds before adding the rest of the ingredients to the food processor, and be careful not to burn the almonds while toasting them. You can use roasted and salted almonds, but its better to use the raw ones.

Cherry Tomato Pesto Recipe
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, not the super sweet kind, a mix is good.
• 3/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, buy a wedge and grate it yourself
• Approx 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 3/4 cup raw almonds, not salted or roasted, but you could use the salt-roast kind in a pinch
• 1 medium clove of garlic, smashed or minced
• 1 small handful of basil leaves and young stems

1. Mince of smash the garlic and let it sit out while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Put the almonds in a dry saute pan on the stove, and toast lightly. Be careful not to burn them. The almonds will click when its time to turn them.
3. Grate the Pecorino Romano cheese with the large holes of a box grater.
4. Pull the basil leaves and young stems from the woody older stems.
5. Put the toasted almonds in the food process and break them down to small chunks and some powder
6. Add the cherry tomatoes, cheese, garlic, basil.
7. Turn on the food processor and mix this all together, be careful not to over process, you want this to have some texture.
8. Slowly drizzle the olive oil into the food processor as it mixed the ingredients together. The pesto will thicken a bit.
9. Test for salt, it may or may not need some.