When the going gets tough, the tough make pesto? With very few ripening tomatoes in sight here at Struan Farm, I've had to decide what to do with all of my flourishing basil. I'd had visions of starters of buffalo mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes and basil for weekend dinners this summer, silly me! Now the basil is heading into flower with nary an heirloom tomato ripe, and that would be a waste.
So I spent a rainy afternoon early this week making a few batches of both basil and sun-dried tomato pestos for fridge and freezer. Checked out basil pesto recipes by Jamie Oliver, Annabel Langbein, and Giada de Laurentiis' "Everyday Italian." They were all quite similar in terms of the actual ingredients, but had varying degrees of garlic, cheese and oil. I opted for the Italian in the group, where I also found the recipe for sun-dried tomato pesto.
Pestos are very easy to make, they're just whizzed up in the blender. The quality of your olive oil in particular is important to the flavour, at least to me. I've been a big fan of NZ's River Estate olive oils since discovering them at the Clevedon Farmer's Market years ago. This was well before they became "award winning" and I remain a loyal customer. Fortunately for me they now have a website and will courier oils to Piopio!
The basil pesto we'll use for pasta and pizzas. It's meant to be frozen initially in ice cube trays, then popped into ziplocks for convenience of use and storage. The sun-dried tomato pesto we will most likely use for a dip.
Now that the basil plants have had a decent haircut I think I've bought some time for those tomatoes to catch up, fingers crossed....!
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