Got a crop of basil taking over? It's DIY pesto to the rescue
This season has become my summer of basil since we're growing it by the bushel. In fact, we've never been as successful at growing basil as we have this year.
My story oddly begins at a local hardware store. This spring my hardware store was giving away herb seed packets as gifts. Since we were together at the store, my partner, Nan, and I each got a basil seed packet.
Nan, uncertain about the basil seed's age, since they were free, was concerned whether many of the seeds would germinate, so she planted the contents from both packets in an over-size pot out by the sunny-side of our garage.
In just a few short weeks the pot of basil first sprouted and then seemed to explode; filling to the pot's edge with beautiful basil plants. We dug into the pot and gave several of the basil plants to relatives and friends. Even then, we still had more basil than we knew what to do with.
Our first and what turned out to be the best idea: turn our over-abundant and ever-increasing basil crop into pesto. It just happened that I already had all the right ingredients on hand: high-quality, extra-virgin olive oil; real Parmigiano-Reggiano parmesan cheese, organic pine nuts, and fresh organic garlic. Can't you taste it?
The flavor of classic basil-only pesto is too strong for me, which is why I haven't bought expensive fresh basil leaves to make pesto for years. Then, I remembered a lighter-flavored pesto I'd enjoyed almost 20 years ago.
When traveling on a book promotion tour, some great folks in Cleveland took me to one of their favorite restaurants, and the chef brought a gift of pesto over to the table. That chef told us it was a special pesto he'd created and wanted us to sample it to see what we thought. I smeared some pesto on a thin slice of restaurant-made bread and took a bite. To my surprise; I loved it. R-e-a-l-l-y loved it and told the chef.
What made this pesto different was it didn't smack my taste buds with basil. No. This pesto was subtle and let the other flavors of olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts come through. Balanced would be the best way to describe it.
Of course, I immediately asked the chef to share what made his pesto so good. He told us that instead of using all basil leaves, he used half basil and half spinach. He said everything else was "classic" pesto.
Today, I turned to New York Times' food writer Florence Fabricant's "Basic Pesto" recipe. Since I already had frozen organic spinach in my freezer my first batch of homemade pesto with my home-grown basil leaves was a cinch to make.
Next, I decided to use my new pesto to sauce some imported Italian linguine, which turned out to be near genius since it took just a little pesto to season the pasta. A bit of the pasta cooking water made it seem lightly sauced.
Couldn't be more pleased with our basil abundance. Lucky us and now, lucky you.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.