This summer, I am blessed with basil. My plants are growing faster than zucchini, sprouting new leaves as rapidly as mayoral candidates spout promises.
I have so much of the fragrant foliage that I am trying new tricks with it. The other night, for instance, I dropped a few basil leaves on the barbecue grill. This maneuver was supposed to keep mosquitoes at bay. It was semi-successful. No mosquitoes buzzed the barbecue. But when I wandered away from the aromatic fire, a few of those pesky Asian tiger mosquitoes chowed down on the back of my bare legs.
I also hung a bunch of basil on the back porch to keep flies at bay. It was not nearly as effective an insect deterrent as the roll of flypaper that was hanging in another corner of the porch. The aroma of basil might make flies move, but sticky flypaper stops them in their tracks. Mostly, this summer's surfeit of basil has translated into plenty of pesto sauce.
The kind of basil I grow, sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum), makes a pleasing pesto.
My wife and I have a tried-and-true pesto recipe. It comes from Marcella Hazan, the Italian cookbook author who is so venerated we almost feel the need to genuflect when we pick up her books.
We do, however, take some liberties with Marcella's classic pesto recipe. Instead of pine nuts, we usually use walnuts. Walnuts are cheaper than pine nuts and we always seem to have some on hand. We also use only one cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and skip the Romano that Marcella recommends.
Still, it is one fine sauce. In the summer, we make batches to freeze in plastic bags. On gray winter evenings, the bags are pulled out of the freezer to brighten up dull meals.
Basil also goes well with fresh tomatoes, and the other day I tried a new pesto recipe, one that folds tomatoes into the sauce. It came from Joanne Weir's You Say Tomato. This is a cookbook that we use in August. It has tomato stains on its pages; that is a good sign.
Out in the garden under a sweltering August sun, I picked several fistfuls of basil leaves. The basil plants, I noted, were about the only items in the garden that the critters - rabbits, birds and a groundhog - had not nibbled on.
This recipe also called for pine nuts. Because this was the first time I had made the recipe I felt obligated to follow the author's instructions, even if it meant shelling out more money. I carefully toasted these prized pine nuts in a skillet. I did not want to burn my investment.
