When life gives you basil and garlic, make pesto. This is our bi-weekly ritual until the end of the summer: We'll cut back the basil to make pesto. If you haven't had pesto, you're missing out. You can do all sorts of things with it like put it on pasta, use it as a marinade with some lemon on chicken, dip bread in it, etc.It is pretty simple to make. You throw the following ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend: 1 cup (or so) of olive oil, 1/2 to 3/4 cup of pine nuts, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic. Then, in small handfuls, you add the basil, while continuing to blend. I end up using 1 big-ass bowl of it. Because we never know how much basil we'll be cutting, the recipe varies. Before serving, you can mix in 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan to every cup of pesto.
On a good day, we'll have fresh garlic and enough cuttings to yield over 2 cups of pesto. Today was a good day. You can store the pesto (if you have any left-over) in the fridge under, in a closed container, under a small layer of olive oil. 
mmm....pesto. Unfortunately, my wife and I have a hard time keeping plants alive.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned this on my blog the other day...Roasted salted sunflower seeds (the kind not in their shells, obviously) make an excellent cheeaap substitute for pine nuts. I discovered that when I had some extra basil and an overwhelmin desire to not go to the store or spend money.
ReplyDeletePesto is great...never had it homemade though. Sounds simple enough too. :) Thanks for the recipe!
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