summer eating: world’s best pesto

A while back, I told y’all about how we set up an herb garden to fulfill my fantasy of stepping out into the yard to pick fresh herbs whenever I damn well felt like it.  I’m here to tell you, this fantasy has come to fruition! (Thank you, Cathy!) Today, I dumped the pasta in to the boiling water, set the timer for ten minutes (so I don’t end up with soggy pasta, or worse, blackened pasta husks burnt to the bottom of a waterless pan because I forgot I was cooking and went to take a bath, no that never really happened, why do you ask?), and thought to myself, “Self, you don’t just want butter on this pasta, you want freshly made pesto!”

Oh my god.  Yes!

“Quick!” I say to Sophie, who loveslovesloves her pesto, “Want to go pick a butt-load of basil for pesto?”

“Yeah!” she says, thrilled to be saved from boring pasta by my brain wave, and she grabs the colander and is out the door.

Here is the state of our herb garden, a couple months after installation.

It isn’t the best, most gorgeous herb garden in the world—observe the weeds—but I think it’s pretty fabulous.  Especially considering I do, essentially, NOTHING to it, except go pick herbs.  We mulched the crap out of them and have ignored them since we planted them.  HERBS ARE FANTASTIC.  The deer even leave them alone (too much with the fancy smells for them).  You really must get yourself one of these.  But see on the right there, the towering, uh, towers of basil as tall as Sophie?  Ka-pow!  Like pure gold, I’m telling ya!

So, back in the kitchen, I gather ingredients and in a minute Sophie arrives with the basil and we rinse it and throw all this stuff into the food processor and boom.  Pesto!  Fragrant, bright green, difficult to not just scoop it out of the processor with our fingers, who needs the pasta, YUM.

It took ten minutes to make, including picking and washing the basil, because remember that timer I set?  It went off, just as we hit the puree button.  With basil in the garden, you are just ten minutes from one of the pinnacles of summer eating goodness.

World’s Best Pesto

2 cups or so of fresh basil leaves.  Wash and dry a bit, pick off the ones with bugs.

1/4 cup parsley

1/4 cup pine nuts, or if those are too expensive, unsalted sunflower seeds

3 or so garlic cloves, minced

1/4 teaspoon salt (adjust as you like)

some fresh ground pepper

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup grated Parmesan and/or Romano cheese

Do the garlic and the salt first.  Then add everything but the cheese and whiz it around.  Then add the cheese last.  You can easily double this recipe, or triple it, but I like to make small batches (it’s so easy to do) because I love it when it is really, really fresh.

And here you go:

“Mom, stop taking pictures of it, I want to eat it!”