Basil

For the year anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging at home at Kalyns Kitchen, the theme is your favorite herb. To be honest, my favorite herb is seasonal. My favorite summer herb is basil, fall is sage, winter is thyme and spring is rosemary. We grow all of these plus parsley, cilantro, tarragon, oregano, lavender, burnet, lemon balm, lemon grass, Wrigley's spearmint, chives, garlic chives, dill and wild peppermint grows wild in my woods. Some years I grow lemon verbena but my main source closed up and I had no easy access this year. One of my cats, Tai-thai has a preference for lemon grass, though you would think she would like the Thai Basil, given her name! Ha!



Anyway, I (probably along with many others) am going to focus on Basil, because it is the time of year when I have to figure out what to do with it all. Hopefully, I can put a twist on it that others have not.


When we make pesto, we make enough to freeze. It isn't as good as fresh, but still wakes up the palate on a winter day, or is great to stir into soups to lift the flavor! One nifty thick is to leave a bit of the pesto in the food processor, then add the flour, eggs, olive oil and water to make pasta. The pasta comes out beautifully flecked with the pesto and is delicately flavored too!




We love to make pizza with roasted eggplant, fresh tomato and fresh mozzarella and put fresh basil on it right out of the oven!


We just made basil, chive, and lime butter to put on fresh grilled corn on the cob.

And we made basil oil. It is great for decorating plates or adding color and flavor to pasta.

We will dry some too. Yes there is an occasional use for dried basil. And this year, for the first time ever, we're going to try to grow it under lights over the winter, now that we have an indoor growing chamber (which is used for grape seedlings, spring vegetables and orchids.)

Looking forward to fall even though I still have a tom of basil to process! And I want you to know how much I enjoy the other Weekend Herb Bloggers! Keep cooking! And if you want the recipe for basil butter, compound butter recipes are our recipe of the week on our website this week so check out Swank Recipes!