Sunday, April 26, 2015

Basil Pesto

I was recently in the enviable position - and fairly uncommon for an amateur city gardener, in my experience - of having a fairly bushy basil plant that was starting to go to seed. Basil needs a really sunny spot - and fortunately my wee garden bed gets lots of it - but only a few months ago, my basil was a forlorn little thing and had mostly been eaten up by bugs. I was on the verge of pulling it out and planting another one when suddenly it rescued itself and took off! Miracle basil! And of course when I thought about what I could do with all my basil, I immediately thought pesto. This is a super easy recipe by the free range cook herself, Annabel Langbein. Her recipe apparently makes a lot more than I ended up with but by the time I got all the basil leaves off my plant, I didn't have quite as much as I'd originally thought.

Basil Pesto

2 packed cups basil leaves - I had 1 cup
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
3/4 cup good quality olive oil - I used about 1/4 cup
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/2 teaspoon of salt
ground black pepper
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts of walnuts (optional) - I used a mix of toasted pine nuts and cashew nuts


This recipe is so simple as all you really need to do is whizz it all up in the food processor.
I used a mix of cashew and pine nuts because pine nuts are pretty expensive and cashews have just as nice a flavour. I toasted them lightly in a dry pan first. Even though I had half the amount of basil leaves, I still used the same amount of everything else, but only 1/4 cup of olive oil. I put everything except the olive oil into the food processor, blitzed it, and the added a bit of olive oil at a time while I blended it a bit slower until I was happy with the consistency - I prefer a little less oil, but you might like a bit more. Good quality olive oil is very important, to get a really nice flavour. My aunt and her partner live in Martinborough and grow their own olives which they press at the village press and I was lucky enough to be given a bottle last Christmas, so I used that.


You can store the pesto in the fridge for two weeks, or freeze it in small containers, according to Annabel. Mine only made one small container though, so I ate it over the next week on crackers, on toast, and stirred through spaghetti with some lightly friend broccoli, kale, spinach, chilli and lemon. Yum!

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