A bit of rain and a whole lot of heat gets the garden just kicking. So much green these days. Green beans, broccoli, cucumbers, kale and chard and so many herbs. We've been freezing and processing like mad. This week it was basil pesto, a staple in this house. (Our girls
love pesto, much better than red sauce-where did
they come from? We use it on pizzas, pasta and just plain toast!).
Last year we inherited a food processor from Andy's mom and boy, does that make the pesto processing a cinch. (A blender can be used, and was for many years in this house, but it is a long blending process with much lifting the lid to tamp down the pesto and the occasional wooden spoon casualty when someone gets impatient with the pulse button-
ahem.) But really, what could be easier (and yummier) than fresh pesto? Load up the food processor (or blender) with basil leaves and a few cloves of garlic (we like ours a bit spicy). Chop briefly. Then add olive oil, we think we added about a 1/2 cup to this batch, but you can just add until you get the consistency you like. We also add some hard cheese (~1/3 cup) like Parmesan, some nuts (most recipes call for pine nuts but we often use walnuts), and salt. These are all rough measurements, we really do this by taste. If it's not cheesy enough add more (good advice for most cooking, I say!).
When you are done with the food processing it should look like this.
We then put ours into ice cube trays (you'll want to appropriate trays just for this purpose because they won't ever really recover from all the fragrant basil and olive oil!). Pop them out when they are frozen and you've got bags full of ready to go, serving size portions.
After that you'll want to be sure to go run around in the yard and spray your Grampy with the hose.
Last year we inherited a food processor from Andy's mom and boy, does that make the pesto processing a cinch. (A blender can be used, and was for many years in this house, but it is a long blending process with much lifting the lid to tamp down the pesto and the occasional wooden spoon casualty when someone gets impatient with the pulse button- ahem.) But really, what could be easier (and yummier) than fresh pesto? Load up the food processor (or blender) with basil leaves and a few cloves of garlic (we like ours a bit spicy). Chop briefly. Then add olive oil, we think we added about a 1/2 cup to this batch, but you can just add until you get the consistency you like. We also add some hard cheese (~1/3 cup) like Parmesan, some nuts (most recipes call for pine nuts but we often use walnuts), and salt. These are all rough measurements, we really do this by taste. If it's not cheesy enough add more (good advice for most cooking, I say!).
When you are done with the food processing it should look like this.
We then put ours into ice cube trays (you'll want to appropriate trays just for this purpose because they won't ever really recover from all the fragrant basil and olive oil!). Pop them out when they are frozen and you've got bags full of ready to go, serving size portions.
After that you'll want to be sure to go run around in the yard and spray your Grampy with the hose.
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