While I generally am a fan of my apartment, one aspect of it really blows. The patio gets no sun after late September as it is blocked by the building as the sun's angle declines. This untenable situation has led to a happy discovery - namely that my room is a near-perfect greenhouse. I've had my planter box with basil sitting on my windowsill for the last couple months, and the basil (both Thai and Genovese) has been doing gangbusters. With my blinds becoming impossible to close, I decided that today was a day to knock my Genovese plant down to size. This is what I was dealing with:
I'd been meaning to make my own ricotta for a while, and decided a creamy pesto was the perfect vehicle to try it out. It was amazingly easy and makes buying the crap you get in the supermarket completely unecessary. Learn how here. Below are the curds draining.
I made some fresh pasta,
smoked a cigar while the dough chilled,
then combined the basil
that was almost first-of-the-summer good with this Cali extra-virgin olive oil (Corto Olive Co., highly recommended) I got today at Costco with the ricotta, some Parmesan, pecorino, toasted pine nuts and a little salt in my food processor. I made an executive decision to skip the garlic as I wanted to let the basil flavor take center stage. If you do want at add the garlic to a ricotta-based pesto, roasting it first takes the edge off and really complements the rest of the ingredients nicely. I finished it with a pat of butter and a splash of the pasta water to cook it slighly. The results were fantastic:
I got another planter box started today with some sage and arugala, and am already excited about getting the new box going. I leave you with this completely random picture of my brother that I feel really captures his true essence:
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