Do you love basil? I’m sure you do, but do you love it the way I love it, i.e., do you think it’s the most delicious smelling food both in this universe and all other possible universes? If I had gotten married in summer, I would have had a gigantic bouquet made of freshly cut basil. At the grocery store–and now on my balcony!!–I tend to spend every day between June and September plunging my face into bunches of the stuff. At an elemental level, it’s what happiness is made of, I’m sure of it.
I am not at all original in the fact that my favourite thing to do with basil is to make pesto. And I like to put pesto on all the usual things; again, I am not breaking boundaries here. I guess this post is just a little love note to one of humankind’s greatest inventions. The greatest things on my dinner plate needn’t be fancy, weird, or expensive; they do need to be so tasty and good-smelling that just being near them makes me scream a little in joy.
Now, the best part about pesto is that it is a thing whose beauty can manifest in infinite variations. I personally enjoy a good basil-kale mix with copious amounts of garlic, lemon juice, and almonds. But here’s what I made recently which was also super-fantastic:
-basil
-garlic
-lemon juice
-pine nuts
-handful re-hydrated sun-dried tomatoes
-nutritional yeast
-water
Not sure about the amounts at all; I was just throwing the good shit into the food processor like I had nothing to lose and worlds to conquer. But really, this is the only way of making pesto that does it justice, don’t you think?
Jam and Idleness 
Divine, and goes with so many things, just had some beautiful fresh pesto made by a friend last week who had been to the poissonnerie and bought melt in the mouth swordfish, salmon and scallops, she made a fennel and radish salad with the pesto on the side, it was total heaven.
It really does go with everything! I pity the fools that don’t love pesto.
I do love basil, but our basil plants never grow. I’m happy if I get a half dozen leaves off of it, so homemade pesto probably isn’t going to happen. =/
I’m in the process of killing my basil through neglect; moving just demands so much effort elsewhere. Sigh.
Love it! Big-batch pesto making is a summer ritual for me. We like to keep small plastic containers in the fridge all winter and scoop out tablespoons like ice-cream to use in pasta and pizza and whatnot. One of my favourite things in the summer though is just to toss a couple tablespoons with some steamed new potatoes…I’m drooling a little just thinking about it…
I never thought of having it with potatoes…but yes, yes, yes. Maybe on top of garlic mashed potatoes? Because there can’t be enough garlic.