Entry tags:

basil, pasta, pesto, tomatoes

Abundance

In the magickal use of herbs, basil represents wealth, abundance, money--all that good, fill-you-up kind of stuff.

Our garden was so full of it this evening that I decided it was time for a MAJOR harvest--which meant I had to figure out something to do with all of this lovely, bountiful stuff.





As you can see, there was quite a load of it--far too much for just the planned tomato-basil sauce.

Even stemmed, there was an amazing lot of it...



So I decided that I would make the tomato-basil sauce, but in addition, I would whomp me up some pesto as well.

Here are the ingredients I used...



As well as two tablespoons of toasted pignoli nuts...



This recipe takes a full two cups of basil leaves, and I still had more than enough left to make the sauce.

I put the basil in the food processor, and added the nuts, 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese, the zest and juice of a lemon, a little garlic, some salt and pepper, and a couple of anchovies...



While the machine was running, I whizzed in some olive oil to make a smooth paste...

And ended up with...





To make the tomato-basil sauce, I started out by dropping the tomatoes in boiling water, so that their skins would split and make them easy to peel...



Then I chopped up a very little bit of onion and garlic...



...put some olive oil in a pan...



(Why, yes--yes that is my new anniversary pan--thanks for asking!)

And then sweated the onion and garlic....



In the meantime, I cut up the basil in a chiffonade and set it aside to be added later...





Once the basil was done, I took the tomatoes, with the skins now split, out of the boiling water, and gave them a nice cool bath.



And then slipped them out of their skins and trimmed the stem ends cleanly.



Once they were all nice and naked, I put them in the pan with the garlic and onions...



And let them simmer a bit, to soften. I added some red wine, some salt and pepper, some crushed red pepper flake and about a tablespoon of sugar, and let it simmer for a bit...



After the tomatoes were nicely softened and falling apart, I added some non-fat half and half, to make it creamy and mellow...



And then turned the heat way down, to just a bubble...



I put some linguine on, let it cook and then drained it well...



And then, at the very last minute, added the basil to the tomato sauce.





Once the linguine was drained off, I threw it into the pot with the sauce...



...and then tossed it to coat.




Plated it up, sprinkled it with cheese, and served with some slices of good baguette on the side...





I had a great time, the house smelled amazing, and I still have enough large leaves of basil left on the plants to make a tomato/mozzarella/basil pannini for our lunch tomorrow--and then some!

x-posted to my own journal....