Hazelnut Purple Basil Pesto and no Funny Food Blogger Posts

The death of Google Reader, vacation, and a hard drive crash hampered my ability to properly follow all the wonderful food blogs and curate the monthly funny posts I like to list. So for the first time, there are no past month’s entertaining links that follow. My apologies.

Despite my absence for vacation, the garden is Pennsylvania is holding its own. I’ve lost my parsley and dill to our resident groundhog and the tomato plants get robbed occasionally but most of the herbs are growing beautifully.

This year I planted purple basil. The color was so beautiful I couldn’t resist. It was time to harvest some of it so I kicked off my yearly pesto making marathon with a hazelnut version using a mix of the purple and green leaves. Like last year, there will be many different pesto varieties

In Germany, our family’s property came with endless varieties of fruit and nut trees and berries. I found unlimited recipe inspiration there. These past two years growing my own garden from scratch has been even more enjoyable that I ever thought possible. There is something so satisfying out of creating dishes from plants I’ve grown from seeds or seedlings. 

This purple basil pesto does not taste any different or look any different (probably because of the above mentioned mixed leaves) than pesto made with green leaf basil but it’s special to me because I grew it myself and it has survived the marauding band of critters who have figured out ways to snatch snacks out of my enclosed garden.

 

• 1 large fresh garlic clove
• 2 cups fresh Basil tightly packed (purple, green or a mix)
• 1/2 cup raw hazelnuts
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• A few drops of raw agave syrup
• pinch of kosher salt

Directions:

• Roughly chop the garlic clove and add it to the food processor.
• Place the basil, nuts and olive oil in the processor and grind everything together.
• Add the parmesan, agave and salt and process well.
• You may want to add more oil depending on how dense you want the pesto to be.
• Place in a sealed container and refrigerate or freeze.