If Life Deals You Basil
(Food)
The two basil plants by the garage have stood up to the heat really fine this year. They’re big and bushy, but lately starting to produce flower buds.
That means it’s time to use the basil or lose it.
To extend the useful culinary life of the plants, you can pinch off the tips of the stems, along with 2-4 leaves. Then the plants will fork each place where they were pinched, doubling leaf production.
These plants are so large that pinching off the stem ends (and picking a few of the biggest and best single leaves) gave me almost 100 leaves.
That’s enough for four batches of pesto, which was exactly what I intended to make, until I took the leaves inside, washed and drained them and discovered that I had no lemons in the kitchen, and only enough olive oil and parmesan cheese for two batches. But I also had plenty of limes.
So it was time to make a double batch of
Non-Classico Pesto SauceIngredients:
– 48 leaves fresh basil
– 4 fat garlic cloves
– 1 and 1/2 cups extra virgin (but of course) olive oil
– 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
– 4 tablespoons walnuts (or pine nuts if you can find them)
– Juice of 3 limes
– freshly ground black and white pepper to taste
Put a large pot of water on to boil, then cook up a 16-ounce package of linguini, fettucini or your favorite pasta.
Put the basil, garlic and half the olive oil in a large food processor or blendor set on “chop” or “grind” or one of the lower settings so as to keep the mixture on the coarse side. Hit the button.
Add the cheese, the rest of the olive oil, the lime juice, walnuts and pepper. Blend until the oil mixes nicely with the rest of the ingredients.
Mix half the sauce with the pasta, and sprinkle on a little more parmesan if desired.
Store the other half of the sauce in the refridgerator, or freeze it to use later.
If you picked basil first and checked for ingredients later, like I did, and wound up with twice as much basil as you needed, allow the basil to dry, then freeze it in plastic bags for winter use when fresh herbs are hard to come by.
→ B.Dunn, Aug 14, 2005, 05 33 pm
