Too Much Basil
/I love having an herb garden that I can just walk out to for a few leaves like basil or oregano or maybe snip some chive or whatever happens to be growing. From a scrawny Walmart plant, our basil plant took off this year and went crazy. So crazy, in fact, that we couldn’t keep up with it. Mary makes a mean caprese salad, and I always add fresh basil to our pasta sauces, and basil leaves are beautiful as a garnish, but you can only use so much. Basil seems to be the zucchini of herbs. What to do with the excess?
One little basil plant took over half the planter!
I found a good traditional recipe in the New York Times for making pesto, and with the intent of making a couple of jars of pesto and freezing them. The six cups required for the freezer jars I intended to make didn’t even make a dent in this ginormous basil plant. And truth be told, David’s not all that keen on pesto! I gave that idea a no-go and moved on. Give some leaves to the neighbors? That only worked a couple of times, and then they got wise to me.
I decided I’d dry it for future use when this basil has produced its last fragrant leaf. I cut several stems, tied them together with a string, and hung them in our hot, dry garage. They were bone dry in just a few days thanks to Nevada’s 4-8% usual humidity. I carefully separated stem from leaf and set about crushing and pulverizing them using a mortar and pestle. I purchased a couple of glass spice-size jars from Hobby Lobby for the finished product. After much picking, drying, crushing, and pulverizing, I found it takes a hell of a lot of basil leaves to fill a little spice jar and an inordinate amount of time. And just how much dried basil am I going to use? Other options? I searched the Internet to find more.
Gardenary suggested blanching and freezing the leaves. It sounded easy, but it was a longer process than I thought it would be. After boiling a pot of water and dipping the stems in it to wilt the leaves, I dipped them in ice water to stop the cooking process. That was easy enough. It was removing the individual wilted leaves from the stems, placing them carefully on a paper towel, and blotting them dry that took the time. The wilted leaves were a bit flimsy… wilted and folded over on themselves. So laying them out flat, blotting them dry, and then trying to get them into a freezer bag without ‘bunching’ them was a bit time-consuming, but I got it done.
I’m not a gourmet cook by any stretch of the imagination, and we’re not foodies. We eat out infrequently. We eat most meals at home. I consider myself a utilitarian cook, although our spice cabinet is well-stocked. I cook so we can eat, and I cook what’s available at the time. We buy very little processed, pre-cut, ready-to-eat, or convenience food at the supermarket. It’s mostly whatever veggies are in season and whatever is on sale. I shop for freshies a couple of times each week. I usually cook extra food for dinner, and we eat the leftovers for lunch.
I hate wasting food, including all that extra basil in our little garden. So, having a few fresh basil leaves or fresh dried basil in February when the pickings are slim might be a welcome addition to my pasta sauce.
Do you preserve food by canning (jarring), freezing? Do you grow your own herbs? Are you a gourmet cook? How often do you shop? Inquiring minds want to know.