Basil Pesto

This is the time of year here for basil. In the weekly shares from Tantre Farm these days, the CSA where I am a member, we get 1 huge basil plant each week. If you place a whole basil plant with roots in a vase or pot with water it will stay good for a week. But after that it starts to get nasty, and it can be hard to use so much. So here is a recipe that takes care of that problem.

Ingredients

Enough fresh basil leaves to fill a food processor (packed well)
2 large cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
2/3 cup parmesean cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts

1. Cut the garlic cloves into a few smaller pieces and chop until fine in the processor.
2. Put the basil leaves in the processor, turn it on and add salt and some of the olive oil slowly until all the basil is blended.
3. Add the pine nuts and parmesean cheese to the processor and pour in the rest of the olive oil.
4. Add black pepper and more salt if you think it needs it.

If you want to make it vegan, just leave out the parmesean and add a bit more salt. Also, pine nuts are pretty expensive so you can experiment with substitutes like walnuts.

This makes quite a bit of pesto, so you can either serve it up to a bunch of your friends, or freeze it and use it throughout the winter. You can do this either of two ways. You can freeze the pesto in ice cube trays (freeze overnight and then place into plastic bags and leave in freezer). Or you can make pesto cookies and freeze them on a baking pan in the freezer. When they’re frozen you can put them in a ziploc. Enjoy!