Harvesting my basil is one of my favourite events of Autumn. Each leaf I pick is like summer in your hand. The smell of sweet basil as I pick it is so heart warming. All I can smell is the potential of pesto dish’s with prawns, chicken, parmigiano, chorizo and home made gnocchi, tagliatelle, linguini etc!
It’s a simple process, and a decent food processor does all the hard work for you. I used Almonds but in most cases Pine Nuts are used. The cheese can be a parigiano or peccorino and the olive oil is totally virgin like.
We bag it up in ‘deal bags’ and pop it in the freezer so that all winter when nothing much grows we can have a taste of summer with our fresh home made pesto. Much less slat than the store bought stuff, and there is a satisfaction that you put this dish together yourself. Nothing tastes better than that.