3: Pesto Sauce with Homegrown Basil

Mmmm pesto! This turned out really nice, and I used three different cheeses and a lot of garlic in my usual fashion of tweaking traditional recipes. I’ve been enjoying the homegrown basil all summer, and it was time to harvest the plant as a whole because we’ve already had our first frost of the season.

Pesto is incredibly easy to make, and it can be frozen for up to three months. Depending on how much you make, you may freeze pesto in a freezer ziploc bag or add to jars to keep in your fridge. Harvesting my basil plant yielded six cups of leaves, for a grand total of 32 ounces, or 4 cups, of pesto sauce. You can add pesto to fresh cooked pasta, toss shrimp in it, or marinade lamb or chicken in the sauce before placing on a grill.

Tips: If freezing in ziploc bags, lay the bag down on its side in the freezer, so you can usually break off a chunk as you need it. Another method of freezing pesto is to use an ice cube tray.

The recipe below is for the amount of pesto I made tonight, so adjust the recipe accordingly.

Ingredients and Directions:

-6 cups of basil leaves, packed

-1 pint extra virgin olive oil

-2 ounces grated parmesan cheese

-2 ounces grated asiago cheese

-2 ounces grated romano cheese

-8 garlic cloves

-1/2 cup sunflower kernels

Combine all ingredients except for olive oil in a blender or food processor. Add about a 1/3 of the olive oil and begin to pulse until desired consistency. Continue adding olive oil little by little until gone, and process everything for about 15-20 seconds.

Enjoy!