Ashley came by this past Sunday and we made a batch of pesto. Yummy. I started out by harvesting all five sweet basil plants from my garden, which was enough to yield about 10 cups of basil leaves. The recipe goes something like this:
2 cups basil leaves, packed
3 cloves garlic
2 T fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 c olive oil
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts, or if you’re like me and you burned the pine nuts, toasted walnuts
salt and pepper to taste
Put all ingredients in food processor and mix until they form a paste. Freeze by the 1/2 cup in plastic bags. (We used snack sized bags put the snack bag into another snack bag so they are double wrapped. Use on pasta, pizza, tofu, chicken or fish. I like to put the pesto on noodles and add chopped green olives, artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes. Good stuff.
We made five batches and will be eating summertime goodness through the winter. I’ll likely do another batch with purple basil before the end of the month.