Better than a Jar: Pesto

You may remember, our first visit to the farmers market resulted in some lettuce a couple herbs. We bought basil, parsley, and cilantro. I’ve since learned that cilantro goes to seed quickly and the best way to have cilantro all season is to plant another after the first one sprouts, over and over. In any case, our cilantro went to seed pretty quick, and the basil… well, the basil pretty much exploded.

We decided to pick it all, because the beetles were starting to eat it faster than we were using it. And what else do you make with a whole lot of basil other than pesto sauce, of course! We started with this general recipe, but Brian always makes some modifications, so here’s what we ended up with (we did it 2-1/2 times since we had so much basil!). All you have to do is use a food processor to mix it all together:

2 cups basil leaves
3/4 cup parmesan (freshly grated is worth every bit of effort, though we didn’t for this set)
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup pine nuts
3 garlic cloves (we used the fresh in the jar kind, liberally since we love garlic)
pepper and salt to taste

Here’s our setup with ingredients. Look at that huge bag of basil!

Adding olive oil (side note: the new camera has the awesome swivel screen, which means I can hold the camera above my head and do awesome straight-down shots. Love it)