Hey Pesto!

At certain times of the year in the garden – after hours of watering, talking to the plants and pruning – it’s time to act. With basil, that means pesto. There’s no need for us to buy it and anyway, the shop-bought packets and jars here are invariably way too sweet.

With our own olive oil, garlic and basil it makes sense to spend an hour or two making a large batch – then freezing it in ice cube trays to be used over antumn and winter. Hopefully we’ll get a second crop in six weeks or so and do the process all over again. Here’s how we make it.

First, we pick the basil and rinse it.

Freshly-picked basil

We use almonds in place of pine nuts. They are beaten with an old tile and after what seems like two weeks, we have a bowl of them.

Almonds

A smashing time

The almonds – plus garlic and salt – are blitzed into a paste.

The flavours, minus the olive oil

The mash

In a larger food processor the basil leaves are blitzed with olive oil and the juice of half a lemon.

Basil, olive oil – with the almond and garlic mash stirred in

The rind from the cheese is carefully cut away. The grated cheese is then added to the basil mix. We used a cheese from Galicia called ‘Galmesano’ (this cost 6.45€). It’s similar to parmesan. More about it here.

Almost there…

Perfect partners

Apart from a jar for the fridge (which should last a couple of weeks), the pesto is put into ice cube trays.

This batch will fill at least four trays – approximately thirty meals as we use two cubes per dish. As the cheese is the only major ingredient we have to buy, the cost of adding pesto to a meal for two is around 25 cents.

The frozen pesto is broken up like a chocolate bar

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