We had a couple of big basil plants at the end of the season so before they got frost bit, we opted to turn them into pesto just as we did last year. After stripping the leaves from the plants, I packed them into large measuring cups and ended up with 12 cups. Then I adjusted Ina Garten’s recipe for the other ingredients to match them.
Basil Pesto – Adapted from Ina Garten
Ingredients:
5/8 cup English walnuts
5/8 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
½ cup chopped garlic
12 cups fresh basil leaves, packed tight
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 3/8 cups good olive oil
2½ cup freshly grated Parmesan
Directions:
Place the walnuts, pine nuts, and garlic in the bowl of a
food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process for 30 seconds.
Add the basil leaves, salt, and pepper. With the processor
running, slowly pour the olive oil into the bowl through the feed tube and
process until the pesto is thoroughly pureed.
Add the Parmesan and puree for a minute. It ended up making
2 quarts of pesto that was a little too thick - maybe I packed the leaves too tight when measuring. But rather than add more EVOO at
this point, I decided to just add it when we are going to use the pesto – less bags
in the freezer that way. Since we still
had some from last year, we gave a little more than half of it to Wende.
Our first use of the pesto was for a pizza.
Chicken Pesto Pizza
It was the end of the garden season and time to turn our
remaining basil into pesto for the freezer, but not all of it. We decided we wanted to use some of it to
make a Pesto Chicken Pizza so I went in search of recipes and ended up taking
parts from several with the main one being Chicken Pesto Pizza from the “Jessica Gavin” blog.
Ingredients:
Ball of refrigerator pizza dough
olive oil, for brushing edges
½ cup pesto sauce
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
2 cup cooked shredded chicken
1 cup little tomatoes, halved lengthwise
7 oz artichoke hearts
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese
Instructions:
Prepare the crust per package directions.
Preheat the Oven – Set the oven rack to the lowest position
and set the temperature to 500ºF (260ºC).
Add the Sauce – Brush olive oil on the edges to make the
crust crispier when baked.
Spread the pesto on the dough.
Add the Toppings – Layer the dough with mozzarella cheese,
chicken, artichokes, and tomatoes.
Evenly sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Cook until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is
melted and bubbly, about 10 to 12 minutes.
Garnish with parmesan cheese.
Slice with a pizza cutter and serve immediately while still hot.
Note – As you can tell, part of the pizza had regular
tomato sauce and no artichokes for Pat (SIL)
Eliza Birthday
Monday was to be Eliza’s eighth BD so she and her parents
came down on Saturday for an early celebration with us and we used a cup of the
pesto plus the extra oil with a pound of angel hair pasta and I tossed in the
remaining chicken and tomatoes from the pizza for a delicious dinner.
We washed it down with a fine bottle of wine that we bought in Italy.
Eliza enjoying her pasta.
Then really enjoying her Oreo Cookie Ice Cream Cake.
It was a really nice day with them and as a bonus, Wende did some important work on our computers making sure they were all virus protected.
Photos can be slightly enlarged
by clicking on them and the blue words are links.
Have a
great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.
Larry
11/1-11/2/25
event dates
No comments:
Post a Comment
I appreciate and enjoy your comments