One of my family's favorite foods is pesto. We put it on pasta, use it as a pizza sauce, and we generally consume a lot of it. We nearly always have this staple on hand, but our supply was nearly depleted. So I bought two bags of basil at our local Cash and Carry yesterday and made a few batches to have in the freezer. As many times as I've tried growing basil, I'm always disappointed with the amount I yield. The growing season is so short here, I would need a greenhouse to be successful at growing these precious plants. Needless to say, I was ecstatic the day I discovered the large bags of fresh organic basil just down the street at a very reasonable price.
Here's my pesto recipe:
3 cups fresh basil leaves
3-4 cloves garlic
3/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup or a handful of pine nuts
1/4 cup good olive oil
Remove leaves from stems. Wash leaves and spin dry in a salad spinner.
In a food processor add 3-4 cloves of garlic and 3 cups or so of the leaves... these should be placed loosely. I have a smaller 7 cup capacity processor.
Grate the parmesan and add it to the leaves and garlic
Measure out the pine nuts and throw them into the food processor
Measure out about 1/4 cup of olive oil and add it to the mix
Pulse the food processor for about 10 seconds. Run a spatula around the sides and blend for another 10 seconds or so until it resembles this consistency without any large leaf pieces...
This recipe makes enough to fill one of these small size deli containers, which is the perfect amount to mix into a package of linquine noodles.
I repeated the recipe 6 times to make these batches for the freezer. These containers stack very nicely too.
Voilà ... dinner!
