Summer Food!

So here it is, a thoroughly summer-y food post.  I love all the fresh produce you can get during the summertime.  Along with produce, however, are the often-overlooked fresh herbs.  I bought this basil plant at the local farmer's market (it was already this large, by the way.  I bought it last week), for $4.99.  If you're interested, that's how much you pay for a little sprig of cut fresh basil at most grocery stores, or how much I could pay for a gallon-size bag of it at the farmer's market.  Check it out:

Since I had a basil plant sitting on my porch taunting me (I'm telling you, this plant was gloating...) I decided to make a favorite treat of mine, that happens to require a whole lot of basil.  I made PESTO!  So far as I can tell, just about every pesto recipe contains some quantity of the following ingredients:

Basil

Garlic

Pine Nuts

Olive oil

Parmesan cheese

I don't have my own favorite recipe, so I used one from Allrecipes.com.  Mine required 3 cups, PACKED, of fresh basil.  That's quite a bit, so... my plant got quite the trim.  (Don't worry, it's still doing JUST FINE)

After I cut it, I rinsed the basil using a salad spinner.  (SEE, a LOT of basil.)

Next up, to the food processor.  Most pesto recipes just sort of tell you to put everything in and pulse until it comes together, but I'm a bit more systematic about my pesto.  I like to chop the nuts first, until I get a paste that looks like this:

Then, I add the garlic cloves and continue to pulse until they're worked in (the paste will look basically the same; it will just smell lusciously garlic-y.

Next up, I add the basil and Parmesan.

I just used the cheapo, grated parmesan you buy at the grocery store, mostly because the recipe called for quite bit of it and I didn't have a block of quality parmesan on hand big enough to suffice.  The pesto turned out just fine with the cheap stuff, but if I'd had better, I would have used it.

AAAAND, we pulse:

Until we get this:

Then, with the food processor running, slowly add the Olive oil.

My recipe called for optional parsley, but I didn't have any fresh on hand, so I did add some dry when everything else was all combined.

As far as serving goes, I really like to mix some pesto sauce with cream (YUM!), and serve it over pasta.  Any type of noodle will do; I tend to buy wacky noodles.  Just because.  I serve it with tomatoes and parmesan cheese on top, YUM!  (By the way, if you have the time- slice the tomatoes, and broil them with salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese.  It's heavenly.)

So, in conclusion... Heck, I don't know.  Go slaughter a basil plant, I guess.  Enjoy the fruits of summertime, people!  It's tasty out there...