Basil

[WadePatton]

Hit me with your best applications of basil, fresh or dried. i have a ton of it and besides a few tomato sammiches, i mostly use it for insect repellant. i'll probably dry a freeze several bags...and plant more herbs next season.

[echelon_john]

use it to steam mussels in white wine; 1/2 basil, 1/2 parsley gives nice bright flavor.

put a big handful of it (finely chopped) in with the other (finely chopped) veggies you're cooking in olive oil when you make meat sauce.

chop it fine and include in any old green salad.

you can actually deep fry basil leaves (or sage leaves, which are delicious too); scramble an egg or two with salt/pepper in a bowl, on a plate put some flour with a bit of salt in it. flour leaf, then egg (which seems counterintuitive, but try it), then into hot olive oil for like 40 seconds. a lot of work for picky little bites but delicious. also a great way to do zucchini.

[maunahaole]

If you have a ton of it, then make pesto. Pesto is mighty good in sausage, among other things.

[Too Tall]

Pesto in vaccum packs / dinner sized and frozen. Make it minus the garlic because that has bacteria blah blah blah. Works like a charm. Many moons ago me and my neighbor did this every yr.
If you need an food processor recipe let me know.
FWIIW we tried drying it a million different ways which all suk'd.
PESTO yo.

[echelon_john]

overlooked the obvious--duh!

yes on pesto! make a bunch and freeze it; it freezes beautifully!

[echelon_john]

in italy, rather than drying it, they simply stuff a bunch of fresh-picked leaves into jars, which they cap and freeze. you can then take them out of the jars individually during the winter as you need them. they'll get discolored when you take them out, but the flavor is still there, so for soups/stews/pasta sauce that works well.

[Chooey]

I once had basil gelato. It was surprisingly good!

[tele]

we like to freeze pesto in ice cube trays so we can use a little or a lot when the time comes

[JoB]

Pesto.
I freeze it in muffin tins and then pry it out after it's hard. one 'muffin' works nicely for a pound of pasta.

downside is, it's expensive to make (olive oil, parm cheese, but you can use walnuts or most other nuts - pignoli are outrageously expensive, and in most stores they're stale or rancid because nobody buys them.)

[WadePatton]

making pesto recipes?

here's something i found: How to Make Pesto like an Italian Grandmother Recipe - 101 Cookbooks.

wrt article above: unless i'm trying to make mush, i hand chop everything anyway as i prefer using the knife and also i hate cleaning the blend-tec.

also i read that walnuts substitute for pine nuts which is fine with me (as pine nuts aren't easy to find here and all i've seen came from the land of toxicity-i refuse to use). i also have pecans and black walnut and hickories handy for harvesting. (hickory&pecan pies are boom boom)

[nomuse]

We like to rub down salmon fillets with olive oil, salt, and pepper. We then wrap basil leaves on both sides with thin ribbons of zucchini and poach over low heat. Very tasty.

[nomuse]

How to Make Pesto like an Italian Grandmother Recipe - 101 Cookbooks

You cannot go wrong with any recipe that Heidi vets.

[Too Tall]

Thanks W.P. Finding gems like this are things are amazing. The next time I see an armload of FAT Tender basil that will emulsify by hand you KNOW that's exactly what I'll do.

Anyone ever use pistachio instead of pignoli? Yee haw

[echelon_john]

You can also substitute pumpkin seeds; "pepitas" for the nuts entirely. they have a nice tooth and mild flavor.

if anybody has a source they like for non-chinese pine nuts i'd love to know.

[WadePatton]

no hey tall pal, thank you. this place is very quickly filling the holes and expanding my overall culinary scope and skills. i hope others are gobbling it up too.

all i can add is that basil is quite easy to grow, probably do fine in a window box or bucket.

[fmbp]

I can indeed say that basil grows well in a container garden. My wife and I planted 20 small basil plants this spring, and we made our 3rd and final batch of pesto yesterday. Batch #1 was 8 jars (probably 5, 8oz jars, and 3 larger jars). We made batch #2 in mid July (11 8oz jars), and batch #3 yesterday (again 11 8oz jars). We do the food processor thing, with walnuts, pine nuts, a shit ton of garlic, parmesan, olive oil, salt, pepper, and lots of basil. It's all sitting in our chest freezer right now.

echelon_john mentioned above about the discoloration - here's a tip to avoid that:
We put our pesto in 8oz canning jars with just a little space at the top. Use some press-and-seal wrap pushed down into the jar on top of the pesto to eliminate most oxygen, then put the canning lid right on top. You'll avoid most if not all of the discoloration.

We've also been eating a lot of the basil with tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, etc, and last night we made bruschetta that was excellent.

[WadePatton]

just gave the pesto like a grandmother deal a go.



easy enough. sans nuts as i forgot to get any last night after picking figs.

smeared it on some tomatoes on toast. very fine. there will be pasta tonight!

[maunahaole]

If basil wasn't so delicious, it would be considered weedy. It can pretty much grow anywhere as long as it gets water. Just make sure to pinch the flower buds off the top of the plants every once in a while.

[giordana93]

if you've never tried it, there's nothing better than the classic fresh tomatoes + fresh basil + fresh mozzarella with a drizzle of olive oil (a drop or two of vinegar is optional-heresy to some; I like mine without or just a drop, maybe lemon juice instead, esp. if tomatoes are from the store). one of the joys of summer and absolutely can't be beat, esp if you have homegrown tomatoes (required). if you can score buffalo mozzarella (not cheap) all the better. really one of the simplest things in the world, yet just so wow. google caprese or Insalata Caprese

here's a link there's really nothing to it, as mr. slater says here "Shopping rather than technique is paramount":

[maunahaole]

Vine ripe tomatoes are critical for that. Also works with balsamic vinegar. One of the things I miss about living in California is the plentiful fresh tomatoes available on the roadside stands. When I worked in Stockton, there was this one spot that I hit all the time that had great reasonably priced product.