I've been making pesto for years now, various types and in varying quantities. Whenever husband & I eat out (not often) and we find something really special, we try to duplicate it.
Here is the absolute best pesto recipe, adapted and modified until we've got it as good as as we can. Adapt quantities according to how much you want to make.
First - pick your basil. Always pinch back your flowering heads, preferably as soon as you see the beginning of a flower appear (instead of leaves at the stem tip, you will begin to see a sort of concentric square structure forming). As soon as basil flowers, it goes to seed then dies back. If you keep pinching it back it will get thicker and bushier (and the more leaves, the thirstier so keep the water up to it). If it sneaks some flowers past you and goes to seed, save the seed and sow it next spring.
So, pick the basil, including any flowers beginning to form. Yes, you can eat the flowers too. You can keep basil in the fridge in a plastic bag you've blown up like a small balloon. Make sure the basil isn't dripping wet or it will go black and soggy. In the inflated plastic bag, it should stay fresh for a week or more. If it gets bruised it will begin to turn black and go soft.
For about a pint of basil leaves (approximately, gently packed into a jug) -
To make pesto - gently pull or cut the leaves from the stems. Put in everything apart from the tough stems. Soft stems at the tips can go in. I put them in a blender or a glass jug (which I use with a Bamix or stick blender).
Do not pull leaves off the stems unless you're about to use it all. You can't do this more than a couple of hours before you make pesto, because picking it off the stems bruises the basil leaves.
Toast your nuts. For about a pint of leaves I use a generous palmful of pine nuts. I dry toast them in a small pan on the hot plate. Alternatively you could roast them in the oven but it's harder to watch and get it right. Toasting only takes a couple of minutes but oh, what a difference in taste! And it is best if you toast the nuts fresh, don't toast weeks ahead and put them in a jar. It's pointless. Toasting the nuts gets rid of the flouriness you can get with a lot of nuts and intensifies their flavour.
Throw the toasted nuts in with the basil leaves. Add in about quarter to half a cup GOOD olive oil (although I have also used macadamia oil). About half teaspoon of salt. Three to four cloves of garlic, roughly chopped (do not use garlic from a jar - this must be fresh).
Puree/blend. It won't be really smooth, but do the best you can. The nuts will take the longest to break down, blend until the pieces of nut are small enough for you. Granular texture is acceptable - tell people it's deliberately "rustic".
Next check the pouring consistency. It should be fairly runny. If it's really gluggy and semi-solid, add more olive oil and puree again, until it's more like pouring cream than cottage cheese.
Next step - add freshly grated parmesan cheese. Do this to taste. Again, for a pint of leaves to begin with, you should use about 1-2 palmfuls of parmesan. To make it easier it's OK to use pre-grated parmesan. I keep bags of grated cheese in the freezer, it keeps forever.
Although you began with a pint of leaves, there would have been a fair bit of air spaces around them. despite adding other ingredients, the end product is a bit under a pint in volume.
At this stage I check it for taste. Enough salt? Enough garlic? Enough cheese? Add what you think you need, this is yours. But there MUST be enough olive oil to form a puddle on top when it settles. This helps preserve it. If there is no puddle, the pesto could slowly go black and mouldy.
Once happy with it, I bottle it into small jars and label it. Or into one big jar and freeze it.
Frozen pesto keeps forever. Even when not frozen - our spare fridge has bottles of pesto that I made a year ago and still haven't eaten. BF1 raids it when he visits, says it's still as good as ever. As long as it looks OK it's fine. If it goes off, you would really see it - the pesto goes black and smells wrong.
If you don't want pine nuts (for example, BF2 is allergic to pine nuts, even if it's easy child 2/difficult child 2 who eats the pine nut pesto and then kisses him) then you can substitute other nuts. Walnuts are supposed to be good but we find them too bitter. I generally substitute cashews - again, freshly toasted. Cashew basil pesto is fabulous.
My problem every summer is not having enough basil, no matter how much I grow.
Uses for pesto - other than to stir through freshly cooked pasta, I've added pesto to a batch of pasta dough, to a loaf of bread I'm baking and we use it as a spread base for sandwiches, especially salad sandwiches. You spread pesto instead of butter, then layer on the onions, tomato and lettuce. Delicious!
Or to use just the basil - here's a great recipe, really quick.
Chop up a couple of fresh tomatoes. Shred some freshly picked basil leaves. Chop up some onion, maybe quarter to half an onion per large tomato, about six large basil leaves (or more) per tomato. If you want, also finely chop some red capsicum (aka sweet pepper).
In non-stick skillet add a little olive oil, then cook the onion until just beginning to colour. Throw in the tomato, the capsicum and the basil, warm through fast and take off the heat. It shouldn't be stewed, just heated until the tomato has softened a little. The basil should still be green.
Serve on bruschetta.
Alternatively - don't cook it at all, just mix the finely chopped ingredients together and pile it onto a fresh slice of crusty bread or eat it as a salsa.
Use as much or as little basil as you want, but unless you know you like it, don't use the leaves whole except as a garnish. A lot of TV chefs are serving their salads etc with hand-torn bunches of basil tossed through and while it LOOKS good (and "rustic") basil is a herb with a very strong flavour, it needs to be finely chopped (or even coarsely chopped) if you don't want your guests to have nasty "hot spots" as they eat it.
The thin sliced basil Witz describes in her post - that works well, is a good option, It also looks good but is a much more sensible way to eat it and enjoy it.
Summer, in my opinion, is home-grown tomatoes enjoyed with fresh-picked basil from the garden. I'm a bit rusty - I think along with bay leaves, basil was considered to be sacred to Apollo, it's a very male herb and with the masculinity, the tomatoes and Apollo (the sun) - it defines summer healthy eating.
Marg