While my husband and I adore the little, old apartment we happened upon in South Minneapolis, we have mourned the loss of our backyard garden. Thankfully, our first trip to the Minneapolis Farmer's Market offered a worthy substitute. While nothing quite compares to homemade basil from hand-picked plants in your own backyard, paying $1 per generous bunch from kind, local farmers provides a close second. I think the Farmer's Market may be a more cost-effective way of obtaining fresh basil.
The $1 basil bunches were delicious in our favorite basil pesto recipe, altered slightly from the New Moosewood Cookbook.
Ingredients
3 (packed) cups worth of fresh basil leaves (roughly 1 1/2 bunches from Minn. Farmer's Market)
5 cloves garlic
1/3 cup lightly toasted walnuts (much cheaper than their friends, the pine nuts)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup parmesan (Kraft brand shredded parmesan works better than the powdered stuff and is cheaper than the fancier brands.)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
Begin by gathering and cleaning your garlic cloves.
Garlic is, by far, the easiest thing I've attempted to grow; simply plant individual cloves in fall, just before the ground freezes, then water a couple of times in spring as the sprouts shoot up. The garlic is ready to pull when it's top green tips start to brown. You can dry and store garlic as it is when you pull it out of the ground or, with just a little stem-soaking and braiding, hang dried bunches in your kitchen as decorations until dinner calls for more flavor!
When I'm smart enough to remember, it works really well to toast the walnuts while preparing garlic as both activities require about the same amount of time. Walnuts go on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 8-10 minutes. The best walnut-toasting advice I've heard? "Your kitchen will smell like toasted nuts when they're ready." From experience, I've also learned that your kitchen will smell like burnt nuts if you don't pull the walnuts out after about 10 minutes...
Next, to prepare the basil leaves. You'll want to wash and dry the leaves carefully and thoroughly (trust me, the teeth-crunching feel of dirt or sand in your pesto kind of ruins the meal). Be sure to pinch off the leaves right at the stems. Also be on the lookout for the flowering tops-- you won't want to use those.
Have you noticed a smell of lightly toasted walnuts? Perfect, pull those guys out and let them cool on a paper towel. (I don't know the reasoning behind using paper towels for cooling toasted nuts, but I have heard of that technique from a few different sources.)
Now your basil leaves and garlic cloves head into the food processor (or blender).
Blend until you don't see big chunks of basil leaf, then add toasted walnuts.
When things are looking pretty consistently-blended, but not over-blended, keep the processor running while slowly drizzling in the oil.
Relocate the mixture into a mixing bowl, add salt and pepper and parmesan cheese with a spoon.
Ta-da! Homemade, delicious basil pesto at a fraction of the cost you'd pay for the over-salted stuff from the grocery store. Basil pesto can keep for over a week in the fridge (it'll stay green longer if you pour a shallow covering of olive oil over the top before covering the container) or frozen for later use in the winter. Also, some smart person somewhere thought of freezing pesto in ice cube trays, for individual serving sizes or to drop into soups or sauces without having to break a piece off from a larger frozen chunk.
Pesto, fresh or frozen can be used as pizza sauce, sauce to spice up cooked veggies, used to flavor soups, or *my favorite* added to cooked pasta. Add onions and tomatoes for a delicious, easy dinner!
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