Monday, August 2, 2010

Would you like some basil with that?

So last week I came home from work with plans to make this Grilled Chicken with Lemon Basil Pasta, and I went outside to cut some basil and found this:


I made the pasta anyway. It was OK, but my cream sauce didn't really thicken. But the point of this story is that my basil has failed me.

Then I got an email from my co-op offering basil by the pound. Of course I immediately ordered a pound for myself. At the time I did not consider how much a pound of basil was or the fact that I was already getting some basil in my share. So on Saturday I picked up this with my share:
 

Then this box that contained the pound of basil:
 
And then one of the employees at my pick-up offered to let me have some less-than-perfect basil that would be fine for pesto. So I also came home with this:
 

So I spent much of Saturday making pesto and chopping basil to freeze.

I made four variations of pesto; here are the ingredients and my opinion on them. (I just threw everything in the food processor.):
 
Pesto #1
  •  2 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves
  •  1/4 cup walnuts
  •  1 garlic clove
  •  1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
  •  1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
  •  About 2/3 cups extra virgin olive oil
I found this one to be very oily, but I think it will work well with pasta.

Pesto #2
  •   1/4 cup olive oil
  •   1/2 cup pine nuts
  •   2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
  •   1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  •   4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
  •   1/4 tsp. salt
  •   Black pepper
This one was extremely strong. At first I thought it was all the garlic but after making the other variations, I realized it was the pine nuts. I'm glad to know I don't prefer pine nuts in my pesto because they are expensive.   

Pesto #3
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup walnuts
  • 2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tsp. minced garlic
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • Black pepper
This is the same as #2 but with walnuts, not pine nuts and less garlic (also in minced form). This is probably my favorite of all of them, but I have now frozen all but about 1/2 cup of #2 so I will probably never figure out which one is which.

Pesto #4
  •   1/4 cup olive oil
  •   1/2 cup walnuts
  •   2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
  •   4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
  •   1/4 tsp. salt
  •   Black pepper
This is the same as #3 but with more garlic (fresh this time) and no cheese. This one was pretty good and might be my second favorite.

So I would have "fresh" basil for recipes like the one above, I froze the rest of it. The tip from my co-op was to wash and chop the basil (I used kitchen shears to chop) and coat it lightly with olive oil. Then I put it in my ice tray and stuck it in the freezer. It is now in a freezer bag, ready for me to pull out and use in recipes.


If you're in the area and need some basil or pesto, let me know, I have plenty to spare!

4 comments:

  1. Oooh ooh! Me!! I was just talking about pesto tonight and some recipes that do not use cheese. I also went to a little cooking demo at The Happy Cook and learned all about various ways to change up pesto. Basil, arugula, parsley, spinach, etc. Pine nuts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, pecans, etc. I may go on a pesto making binge of my own!

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  2. I have a TON of basil this year so thanks for the recipes and ideas! I'm going to do this too. Afte ryou put the basil in the ice cube trays and froze it, did they make square ice cubes b/c the olive oil was in them? Just curious on that last step.

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  3. Good tip on freezing the basil. I didn't know what to do with it and tips I read about keeping it fresh in a vase like flowers did not work at all.

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  4. Another tip from my cooking class is if you are going to freeze pesto, to make it without the cheese to freeze and add the cheese right as you get ready to whip it up to serve. She said that the water content of the cheese usually throws off the texture and people don't realize that is the problem and think they have stored it in the freezer for too long or something.

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