Basil Pesto by the Gallon, and Then Some

What do you do when you see one of your favorite farms offering fresh Organic Basil in bulk? You get a crazy little bug in your ear that says "Make lotsa pesto!" How much? Oh, yeah, let's go with 10 pounds of basil. That can't be that much…

So, we made Basil Pesto today. 10 pounds of Basil fresh from Whistling Train Farm. This calls for some serious recipe scaling!

Step one: Find the base recipe. I went with Marcella Hazan's "Food Processor Pesto" from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
2 cups packed Basil
0.5 cup grated Parmesan
0.25 cup toasted pine nuts
2 cloves peeled garlic
0.25 teaspoon salt
0.5 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter

Step two: Convert to metric and weight. Why? I'm going to need to scale way up with all that Basil.
100 grams Basil
60 grams Parmesan
40 grams pine nuts
10 grams garlic
1 gram salt
60 mls olive oil
10.5 grams butter

Step three: Spend 5 hours of picking the leaves from the basil plants. And weigh it. I ended up with 3 kilos basil (that's about 6.6 pounds).

Step four: Scale the recipe.
3 kilos Basil
1.8 kilos Parmesan
1.2 kilos pine nuts
300 grams garlic
30 grams salt
1.8 liters olive oil
315 grams butter

Now, to get everything ground up and mixed. I'm so glad I invested in a Robot Coupe as a Christmas present for us a couple years ago. First time I used the grater plate. It tore through the blocks of cheese in no time flat.

Regular blade on the garlic and the pine nuts. But, wait, I have no bowl big enough to hold everything! So I pulled out a large plastic tub and started combining everything in it. The grated cheese, the garlic, the pine nuts, add the salt, mix a bit.

Now, all that Basil and oil. But look at the Basil! this is only one third of the leaves. Seriously. One third.

Multiple batches through the Robot Coupe, mix them into the other ingredients in the tub, and slowly but surely, the pesto takes form.

After the final mix, I portioned the pesto out into pint containers. 18 of them. Topped with a bit more olive oil, they're now in the chest freezer waiting for a years worth of uses.

In case you're wondering about costs, be prepared. When I started this project, I had no idea how much pine nuts cost, and how much I'd need. On sale, they ran $66.25 for the 1.2 kilos I needed (on sale at $25/lb). Add another $40 for Parmesan (on sale at $10/lb), $60 for the Basil and another $28 for the oil.

Final cost came to about $11.50 a pint. Not cheap, but I know exactly what went into it, and all the ingredients were top notch. And it tastes so fresh and vibrant with the basil and salty from the Parmesan. Really worth it!

What to do for an Anniversary Dinner?

It's been two years. Yes, two. My bride and I tied the knot at the County Courthouse in front of a wonderful judge two years ago, on a Monday, July the 22nd. (Wednesday this year.) There is photographic and video evidence to show the event really happened.

But, we'd been living together for 14.5 years prior. Making 16.5 years total, now. And, has the romance dripped away? I mean, that's a long time. Not long, like I see in the obits in the paper, of couples who've been married for 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or more years. That's crazy wonderful. But what do I do for 14.5 years plus 2?

I cook.

No pictures - it was a private affair. But, I wooed my sweetie back in the day with risotto. It was butternut squash risotto. But I did it differently from the recipes out there. Instead of having the squash be a "purée" kind of mix in with the rice, I cut the squash into rice-grain sized pieces (yes, it took time). Then I flash fried them in butter and drained them. Set them aside. I made the risotto using homemade chicken stock, and just as the rice was done, folded the fried squash into the rice along with the parmesan off the heat. What I love about this preparation is there is a little bite from the squash; it's not all mush - I don't like all mush.

For our anniversary dinner, first up, some farmer fizz. As in, grower Champagne. A blanc de blanc. I would have preferred a blanc de noir - but the choices weren't so good. Then, for dinner on our #2 anniversary, I made risotto. This time, I folded in fresh (blanched and shelled) fava beans. And teamed it with two seared scallops and a fillet mignon medallion. Dessert was raspberry sorbet (which Dorothy had made previously - and she'd added a touch of mint and lime to it - mmmmmm).

At "our age" it's so much more about the taking care of each other. And we show our affection through cooking and wowing through cooking. It's our thing. We're probably not unique in that.

Tomorrow, Saturday, is Dorothy's birthday. I'm cooking again. I will try to remember to take pictures. I will try to remember...