Pesto

A few days ago, Bill and I picked up our first batch of basil (4 lbs)  from Horse Drawn Farms and yesterday, I finished processing the last of it into pesto. In case you’re wondering, here’s what a 1 lb bag of basil looks like.

After picking the basil leaves, grating the cheese and peeling the garlic, the kitchen island “station” was all set for pesto processing.

The rolling pin is for bruising the basil leaves before they go into the food processor. (A tip from Cook’s Illustrated.)

Oops, I didn’t have the knife when I took the “station” photo. I need that for smashing the garlic (which we harvested from our garden a few weeks ago).

I start with the garlic, cashews, salt, lemon juice and half the olive oil in the food processor.

Process, scrape down the sides, add the walnuts and the rest of the olive oil. Process, scrape the sides again and add the cheese. Process, one last scrape, a little more processing and voilà!

Into the pint jar it goes and on to batch two.

Lots of folks have their favorite pesto recipe, here’s what I did this time. Mostly, I like to weigh the ingredients (I can pack a little or a lot of basil leaves into 1 cup). I split my 1 lb bag of basil into 4 batches and usually end up with a little over 3.5 oz per batch. I used to always use pine nuts in my pesto, but when the price DOUBLED a year or two ago, I switched to a mix of cashews and walnuts.

~ 3.5 oz basil (4 cups - more or less)
.75 oz garlic
Scant 1 tsp salt
Scant 1 Tbsp lemon juice (just enough to brighten the flavor without a noticeable lemon taste)
1.5 oz cashews
1 oz walnuts
1.25 oz grated parmesan (about ½ cup)
1 cup olive oil

Put basil leaves in a plastic bag and bruise them with a rolling pin. Smash the garlic cloves. Process the cashews, garlic, lemon juice, salt, basil and half of the oil for about 10 seconds. Scrape down the sides, add the walnuts and the rest of the oil and process for another 5-10 seconds. Scrape the sides again, add the cheese and process for a few seconds. Scrape the sides one more time and process until well blended (about 15 seconds more).

One batch makes a little over a pint and four batches makes about 4 ½ pints. (And 4 lbs makes 18 pints of pesto.)

Here are my latest set of pints all ready to take out to the freezer and look how clean the kitchen is!!

This was exactly 2 hours after I stepped into the kitchen (which includes a few breaks to take pictures). Bill jokes about needing to call FEMA whenever I get going in the kitchen, but I think I did a pretty good clean-up job this time. (Well, there is the egg carton propped on the mixer in the corner and, yes, there are a few dishes in the sink ... but hey ... I think it looks pretty good, overall ... and at least this time, FEMA can stay away.)