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.