I should probably mention that a couple of vital pieces of kit are not pictured, such as a giant-ass pestle and mortar, and an electric food processor (or if you prefer, simply a blender).
Also if anyone ever actually uses my ridiculous attempts at cookery as guidelines (ha!), then that's all the stuff you need to cook pesto my own weird way. Due to my complete lack of photographic ability, some of that might not be so obvious what it is, like the block of parmesan cheese, or the sun-dried tomatoes.
First things first, get the usual boring shite outta the way, chop pepper and red onion, set aside.
Next, use about a third of a pack of pine nuts, pour 'em out onto a baking tray, stick them under the grill for a minute or two, you don't even want to brown them, just veeeery lightly roast 'em. Take those out, and set them aside too.
If your tastes are similar to mine, and you don't give a fuck how bad it makes your breath smell, take 2 whole cloves of garlic, peel and chop them, and throw 'em into your mortar. Sprinkle in some big-ass rocks of sea salt, and tear off a sparse amount of basil leaves. I don't like a whole lot of basil, so feel free to use a forest's worth, if that's your thing.
Grind it all up, really smash it until it becomes a pulverized paste, then scrape it into your blender.
Next, take your gently roasted pine nuts, chuck those into your freshly emptied mortar, and proceed to destroy those too. As anyone who has talked to me for even 5 minutes will know, I don't eat anything unless it has some sort of chilli or ridiculous spice in it, so I threw in a good few pinches of mixed dried chilli seeds, and ground those into the pine nut mush.
Once those are sufficiently obliterated, scrape them into the blender with your garlic/basil paste.
Here comes the part I was wary of, as most pesto recipes recommend using a liberal amount of parmesan cheese and olive oil, neither of which I am into in any way (seriously, the smell of oil makes me want to vomit out my entire digestive tract. I hope that mental image just ruined your appetite. you're welcome.).
Instead of just bitching out and substituting these ingredients for something more palatable to my... well, palate, I decided to face my food fear, and I grated that fucking parmesan like I was downright goddamn pissed off at it. Sprinkle about half of what you grate into the initial blender-ful, drizzle in some (BLURRRRGH) olive oil, stick a lid on it, and blend away.
At this point you can start adding in whatever ingredients you think will work, to supplement the basic pesto paste. I went for a coupla sun-dried tomatoes, which are salty as all hell, as well as a nice big splash of Louisiana Hotsauce, and just a few chunks of my sliced red pepper.
I know, that looks fucking revolting, but trust me, once it's all blended up to fine paste and added to all the other ingredients, aesthetics will be the last thing on your mind.
Blend all that yet again, splashing in more (but not too much!) olive oil as needed to give it a good sloppy consistency, and any additional parmesan if it gets TOO viscous.
Scrape it all out into an empty jar, with any luck you'll have enough to either feed four people, or to be eating nothing but pesto for a whole weekend.
Boil up a pot of water, and drop in your choice of pasta. Normally I'm a fusilli or penne man, but seeing as I used up all of that on my other dinners this week, I was left with tagliatelle.
Start a fire under your frying pan, and lay your bacon in it, making sure to cut off every sliver of excess fat. This is one of the rare occasions that I like my bacon burnt to a crisp, so... do that, and chuck in all of your red onion and red pepper, to lightly fry those too.
When your bacon is the consistency of a corpse's skin putrefying and crackling in the glare of the sun (apparently reading too much Stephen King will make you think of everything in terms of corpse metaphors), and your onions are starting to brown, scoop in a good 3 or four teaspoonfuls of your pesto mix, and stir it all together.
Drain your pasta, and add all of that into your frying pan too. Stir it around for a couple of minutes, so the pasta starts to burn slightly. This is a personal preference, you could also make this without the pasta going anywhere NEAR the frying pan.
Finally, get bored of stirring and feeling hungry as fuck, and serve it up!
While you gnash away hungrily at that, listen to something appropriately (and yes, connected to the post title, as fucking ever) technical and carnivorous sounding. Some prime late-80s death metal for ya:
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