The Moveable Feast Food Blog

The Moveable Feast is a Personal Chef Service that serves the Hampton Roads area of Southern Virginia. This blog is an extension of my web site www.themoveablefeastpcs.com and will go into more details about food and any food service industries. Any pictures and or recipes that are published here are all the property of The Moveable Feast unless otherwise noted.

Friday, September 30, 2005


Pesto and Pasta

I have the day off from cooking in a client's home and now I have a "play" day. I tried a few weeks ago to make Pesto with one of my client's basil. Most basil around here has gone to seed. I know mine has and I will be pulling up the plants for the fall planting of mums for color during the dreary months of winter.

I harvested the basil, got it home, washed it, made it, ate it and spit it out. I guess I didn't wash the basil well enough because it was very gritty. So determined to have basil in the winter months, I talked to the produce manager at my local chain market. He told me he could sell me a bulk box of basil. So since today is "play" day I have made Pesto. After making it I sprayed an ice cube tray. To keep the Pesto from turning that awful brown I put a piece of plastic wrap over it mashing out all the air bubbles that I could.
Then I popped it in the freezer and waited for it to get rock hard. It took about 3-4 hours. When I popped all of the Pesto out I put the cubes in a freezer bag and they went right back into the freezer.

I have a dish in mind for dinner so this is the first component of the dish. The second component involves cream, butter, flour, garlic, parmesan, s&p, and a lovely lobster tail. I made an Alfredo Sauce and added three heaping spoonfulls of the Pesto I did not freeze and stirred. It got pretty thick so I thinned it down with a little milk and that smoothed it out. I had a bag of Spinach & Chive Linguine pasta from Trader Joe's and used that for the pasta portion. This is the finished product.

4 Comments:

At 10:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought I had posted a comment yesterday here :( Anyways...your pesto looks delicious and really beautiful. Nice bright green, that's important :) Hugs,

 
At 12:12 PM, Blogger vlb5757 said...

Thanks Melissa, you did post because I read it and responded to it too! I have no idea where on earth it went. I mentioned in the post that is missing, that I do the same thing with tomato paste and any kind of stock. I hate to waste things like that so this is such a clever idea. I wish I could take the credit but someone else told me about this method about 7 or 8 years ago.

I had such a good time making it. You can't believe how much basil I started with to get two ice cube trays full, three mini Glad round containers and a larger Glad container.

Your post about roasted garlic made me hungry!! Now I will have to have some with the Goat cheese, roasted Red Bell Peppers and the lovely French Bread this weekend. Wow, this blogging stuff is getting expensive! lol!

 
At 8:59 PM, Blogger Farmgirl Susan said...

Yay pesto! Last summer I finally remembered to put some in ice cube trays. Oh, it changed my life! Just toss a couple of them into the garden tomatoes I 'put up' in the freezer, add some fresh oregano from the greenhouse, and voila! instant awesome pizza sauce. Just last night I made a big batch of pesto with the last of the garden basil. Great post! : )

 
At 9:00 AM, Blogger Ruth Daniels said...

The frozen pesto looks wonderful. I always love it in the winter to give me a much needed taste of summer sun.

Thanks for sharing

 

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