Pesto!

Yesterday I used the fresh basil from Madison's Farmer's Market to make some homemade pesto. Yum! I used the recipe here. It turned out great! Heidi Swanson says to chop all the ingredients, adding more basil, pine nuts, cheese as you go. That way, the pesto is not one big blob of green. You can see all the ingredients, so the texture and visual components are different than normal. I can verify, this is very cool. It is pretty as well as tasty. It was very good stuff, with one minor problem...

When I added a bunch of it to hot pasta, all the pesto clumped together as the cheese melted, and all my chopping went out the window because the stuff resembled the green blob I was trying to avoid. Next time, I will add the pasta water to pesto before adding pesto to pasta. Pesto pasta pasta pesto, fun to say! This will thin the stuff out a bit, and it will combine better. Theoretically.

Anyway, I ate the stuff spread on a bagel this morning, and that was pretty awesome. I think basil is my current favorite herb.

Heidi Swanson's site is very nice. Good recipes, clear instructions.