Since we are supposed to get frost tonight, and my one basil plant has been on steroids the past two weeks, I decided to harvest and make pesto for the first time ever.
Wow, was that easy!
And it tastes good! I have almost a cup in an ice cube tray in the freezer, and a small amount to toss with my pasta for dinner tonight. I read all sorts of pros and cons on freezing it with the Parmesan cheese in it…decided that, since the parmesan was frozen to begin with, re-freezing it shouldn’t matter. I was light on the garlic, and who knows what type of cheap parmesan this was I found in the freezer (not the powdery kind, but definitely not the Best Stuff) but it still tastes great!
We LOVE pesto, and made a triple batch a few weeks ago. Then my husband started complaining the next day that everything tasted of metal. First some worry, then some googling turned up - pine mouth. First I thought it was because I pointed out there some slightly less expensive pine nuts at the store now, but then I just checked and the ones we normally we get 3x the price…are from china as well. I don’t know if I could give up having pine nuts (hummus, cookies, salad toppings, PESTO) on the off chance we might get pine mouth
Wow. Pine mouth. I always buy my pine nuts at Trader Joe’s, and the ones I used today were several months old, the bag half gone, and I’d noticed no odd taste. But what a weird thing, especially since they can’t pin it down to one supplier or one country.
You don’t actually NEED pine nuts in pesto, though I like them - especially lightly toasted.
Alternatively, you don’t actually need basil in pesto either. My favorite pesto is actually rocket pesto. Same basic recipe, just replace the basil with rocket. Lots of rocket. Also doesn’t need pine nuts, since rocket tastes nutty by itself. Yum yum yum.
see wiki - seems the name Rocket is British. Rucola is the Italian name. It’s great as salad leaves, as a garnish on pastas (especially creamy sauces) or on bread with cheese.
