Pesto, without the nasty cleanup

It's September, and our three basil plants have been supplying us all spring and summer.  As long as I keep up with the occasional flower, they seem happy.  With the season winding down, it was time to give them a major haircut, which means it's pesto time!

I love pesto, but I loathe the mess.  Typically, I dump the ingredients--basil leaves, oil, garlic, pine nuts (or walnuts), salt and pepper into the food processor, give it a whir, rearrange the leaves several times, and repeat until I get a nice "paste" of tiny basil bits suspended in the oil.  (I typically add the Parmesan cheese later, because I often make enough to freeze, and pesto laden with Parmesan doesn't freeze well--or so I've heard).  But the result is an oily food processor with those tiny basil bits splattered all over the food processor parts--a chore to clean up.

So it was with great excitement that I read the following lines from one of the e-mail blasts from Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI):  "My preferred "presto with little mess-to" method is using a stick blender which I find easier to wash up and less wasteful than a food processor."  I assumed that a "stick blender" was British for an immersion blender, and was game to try this.  

I found the method worked best by turning the blender on and stirring it around the bowl to make sure to capture all the basil.  The stirring was the same motion you'd use for stirring anything else in a bowl.  After about a minute or so, I had a nice creamy pesto sauce, which I added to the homemade pasta dug out of the archives in the freezer (May 2015). and topped with some grated Parmesan cheese.

So thank you KGI!  And thanks for the video showing how to make TRUE pesto as done in Genoa, with a mortar and pestle.  (And if you need a pesto recipe, the proportions there are as good as any).  Some day I will try this, but until then, I'm sold on the stick-blender method.

Also, a by-the-way shoutout to KGI.  If you're at all into gardening, or think you might want to be into gardening if only you knew what to do, this is a must-have resource.  They have a great website with articles and videos.  But best of all have an online garden planner that lets you lay out your garden and it generates a planting schedule and shopping list.  It also keeps track of what you've planted for next year, so you can take advantage of succession planting concepts.  It costs $25 per year once you've used up your free month, but it's well worth it.  ESPECIALLY because they plow the money back into all sorts of good causes.  Last year, they gave grants to 200 community gardens around the world in their Sow it Forward Food Garden Grants!
 

Yes please, I'll have me some of that: A simple one pot pasta with tomatoes and basil

Here's a shout out to Food52.  They're an cooking-oriented website that covers a lot of territory, has a great attitude, and consistently puts out good content that I want to read (and recipes I want to cook).  I get their e-mail newsletter several times a week, and there's always something I want to try.  Check it out if you haven't.  It seems that they're pretty successful, and I hope that the appearances are true, because they deserve to be.  So, they don't really need a shout out from me, but today was special.

I was reading Food52 at lunch time, like I often do, and saw this "genius recipe" for one pan tomato pasta, clicked over, saw the lovely picture, and started reading.  The idea is simple, true genius, and I wished I'd thought of it myself. Turns out, it was Martha Stewart who thought of it.  Apparently, this was all the rage a while ago on the Internet, but I missed it.  It's dead easy and delicious.  And I just had to make it tonight. 

Here's why.....the garden tomatoes are starting to come in. And the basil is doing well.  I had onions and garlic in the pantry and a some whole wheat pasta spaghetti.  It was a no-brainer.

The recipe is indeed as easy as looks.  You just dump all the ingredients in a straight sided skillet (called a sauteuese).   There's enough water to just cover the pasta.  You boil it for 10 minutes (they say 9, but my spaghetti was whole wheat, and it said 10), and you've got a meal.  Top with a little Parmesan cheese and your set.  Yum. Go look at their recipe.  It works!  Prep time...5 or 10 minutes, tops.

A few notes.  When I looked at the quantity of salt (2 teaspoons for a dish that makes four servings), I was sure it would be too salty.  But it wasn't.  And I chiffonaded the basil leaves and tossed them in right at the end of the cook time so they just wilted into the dish rather than cooked.  It's better for fresh basil not to be cooked.  And you just use raw onions--no sauteing first--the 10 minutes of cooking in the starchy water was enough to sweeten up those onions so they were mighty tasty.

And click over to their link to other one pot pasta meal "spinoffs".  There's bound to be something tasty there!