Basil Pesto Recipe | RI Coastal Garden Food

Basil Pesto Recipe| RI Coastal Garden Food

Garden fresh is important to me and part of my RI real estate life!  Organic gardening is my passion and today it was basil pesto recipe  time for future months of use to be made and frozen.  Basil is one of those herbs that doesn’t like great soil and is easy to grow from seeds…yes, even you can do it.  I find that it is easy to grow in a pot with some basic potting soil and lots of sun with a bit of water added.

As the basil plants grow up after they get to 4-5″ high you will need to start trimming the basil shoots.  Trimming the basil bush is a

Bail pesto in ice cube trays

must to make it bushy and to give you more leaves for pesto making.  Snip off with scissors about a 1/4 inch above leaf growth to allow new branching to occur.  Use the clipped portion with your mozzarella cheese and home grown tomatoes or just in a bit of extra virgin olive oil for flavoring your dinner choices.  Personally basil leaves heated up in olive oil makes for great dipping for bread too.

So here is the RI coastal home grown garden food that lasts the winter.  The following is a basic basil pesto recipe:

2 cups picked basil leaves

3 cloves of garlic

1 cup of chopped walnuts

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 1/4 cups of a combination of parmesan and romano cheeses, grated

Salt and pepper to taste

Do in 2 batches, if done in a blender(use a food processor too) as I do, blend the garlic, basil and walnuts.  Make sure it is chopped up well.  While the blending is proceeding add the olive oil consistently to the blending mix.  Then add the cheese with a bit of salt and pepper to taste.  Keep on blending a bit.

Take out out ice cube trays (tell me that you still have them around or go buy some at the local hardware store).  Spoon the pesto blend into each of the ice cube sections and put in the freezer.  Each basil pesto cube is enough for a one person basic serving portion.  When frozen, pop each cube out and place in a freezer bag for future use and put back in the freezer.  VOILA!  You have made basil pesto the Rhode Island way….Happy cooking.

For me with a bit of milk over some angel hair pasta with apple chicken sausages is just the right combination for dinner.  Now go get busy and make this basil pesto recipe…I need to get busy in real estate today.

Basil Pesto Recipe | RI Coastal Garden Food

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