Thursday, September 11, 2008

Presto Pesto!

I admit to being a poor planner. My tendencies are if one of something is good, then more must be better. I love basil as an herb and consider it one of the most fundamental flavors for cooking. When I planned the garden this year, I decided that the herbs would take center stage and the only vegetable I would grow would be the tomatoes. I planted three sweet basil plants, three leaf basil plants and two Thai basil plants (love the Thai basil!!). Next year I think I'll eliminate at least two of the plants. The end result has been a glut of basil. No matter how much I use the size of the plants never seems to go down. On Saturday I harvested a bowl full to make pesto and now it looks like I didn't take any. The plan is to make lots of pesto.

Pesto freezes easily and can last months once frozen. One trick is to buy ice cube trays and freeze the pesto in the trays. Once frozen you can pop them out of the trays and place them in zip lock baggies for long term storage. One cube melted over some pasta will yield a great quick meal. My recipe follows:


Pesto

2 cups sweet basil (packed)
1 Tbsp pine nuts
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
fresh ground pepper to taste
Optional: 5 mint leaves, dried oregano, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Saving the oil for last, place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until chopped. Do not use a blender. The blender will chop things too finely and result in a loss of texture. You want a choppy look to the pesto, not a fine mush. By packing the food processor with the dry ingredients first then adding the oil you will get better results. I prefer to add the Parmesan separately to the pasta or dish being served, but some recipes call for the cheese to be added to the pesto mix when making the pesto.