pesto
An uncooked sauce made with fresh basil, garlic, PINE NUTS, PARMESAN or PECORINO CHEESE and olive oil. The ingredients can either be crushed with MORTAR AND PESTLE or finely chopped with a food processor. This classic, fresh-tasting sauce originated in Genoa, Italy, and although used on a variety of dishes, it is a favorite with pasta. Now there are "pestos" made from myriad other ingredients from CILANTRO to MINT.
© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst.
I really need to make some pesto this weekend. I have piles of basil on the back deck and it's going to go to waste if I don't do something with it. I think John had this problem recently, too. Not that it's a bad problem to have.
Speaking of overabundance, we are also just about to be overrun with figs. We have a fig tree in our side yard, which delivers, twice a year, about a million figs within a month. So far this round, only three have ripened. But there are probably 150 that are about to be ripe.
Fig salad, fig confit, fig and proscuitto, more fig salad. I love figs, and I know how lucky I am to have this amazing resource in our backyard...but wow do we end up with a lot of figs.
4 comments:
My basil plants aren't growing as rampantly as usual. We have three sweet basil and one each Thai and "lettuce leaf" and all look fairly pathetic. And we have lots of flowers on our tomato plants (and a few tomatoes) but the flowers are just hanging around forever and not turning into fruit. Is it not hot enough? not wet enough? not humid enough?
I'm jealous about the figs. Mmmm.
Ours weren't doing great, so we moved them into a slightly less sunny spot and stopped watering them so much and now they're flourishing. Maybe because we stopped stressing about them. I'm not sure though, as I am a terrible gardener. Fortunately, my mother-in-law is great with plants, so we rely on her for a lot of advice.
Lucky you! I don't think we have enough sun in our backyard to support a fig tree but what a great problem a surplus of figs would be.
Mmmm...pesto...
My neighbor has a HUGE fig tree and does nothing with it... a total crime. I'm thinking of ways of asking to harvest it myself.
Post a Comment