Gayle's basil revisited

Hi this is Gayle and I've hijacked Angels blog again. It's been quite a while. (Maybe last year this time when we canned.) At one point I had hoped to do food tours and farm markets and we never quite got to doing that together. But we may, and if we do, be assured that I'll write about it. Food just doesn't work in my walking blog!

Last time I talked about preserving a motherload of basil was back in 2009. The scenario is about the same. This time I received an email from my neighbor that said, we have extra basil, do you want some?

He arrived late this afternoon carrying two basil trees. It was a lot of basil. Once you pick it the clock starts ticking. It turns black in a New York minute and my house, like Angel's, has no air conditioning. So the spoiling window is even smaller.

Last time I picked the leaves, put them on cookie sheets and put them in plastic zip bags. I really didn't like how it thawed. It was all limpy and broken. So this time I decided to do a twist on the "put pesto in an ice cube tray" idea.

I washed it, and dried it between two towels. I still have not bought a salad spinner. It's days like this I really want one. (The picture is about half the leaves.)

Then I put it in the food processor, a bit at a time and chopped it.

In the meantime, I took my mini cupcake tins (I don't have extra ice cube trays) and sprayed them with olive oil. You could use something like Pam. I just put oil in a small spray bottle. Then you can have lots of oils and no chemicals. Yes, sometimes it does get clogged.

I used a teaspoon, and picked up a lump of ground basil, and used the other hand to guide it into the cookie tin.

Finally, I put it in the freezer to harden. When they are hard, I'll pop them out, put them in an airtight container and use as I want. A brick or two to make pesto. A brick in my sauce or a stew.

Should work great and I won't have to try and cut slippery basil.