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| Thai Basil |
Who doesn't love basil pesto! Well, maybe there are a couple people out there. If made properly (read - home made) it adds a wonderful undertone to tomato sauce or used alone to paint just simple pasta or to spread on hot crusty bread or on fish, poultry or even on the side with a nice steak - wow! Plus it freezes well so it's a good way to save fresh basil for winter. We grow a number of different types of basil in our garden - good ole workhorse sweet Genovese basil, purple basil, lemon basil, curly leaf leaf basil and Thai basil. I guess you have figured out that we kinda like the stuff. Each one of these varieties has its own taste and aroma.
Pesto comes from the Italian word pestare which is a term that means to pound or crush. So it is a sauce where the ingredients are pounded or crushed together. The Old School way would be to mash the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle. That would be great if you have a mortar and pestle in your kitchen but a food processor will do just fine. The ingredients most typically used to make basil pesto are fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and olive oil.
Pesto doesn't have to be made with basil. After all it is basically just a "green sauce" like chimichurri or salsa verde, or green chutney to name a few. You could use another aromatic herb instead like parsley or arugula or oregano. And change the other ingredients around too that better compliment the herb you are using like using cashews or walnuts or peanuts instead of pine nuts or other oils like grape seed oil or avocado oil or sesame oil or changing the cheeses too. Experiment!
OK, so let's get back to Thai basil. Thai basil does not taste like the sweet Genovese basil most people are familiar with. It has a stronger aroma, spicier and with a mild anise or licorice background. It could, but shouldn't, be used in a traditional Italian basil pesto sauce because other ingredients better compliment the special taste of Thai basil. Lisa harvested the last of our Thai Basil just before we were supposed to have a frost that would turn the basil leaves to mush and put this recipe together to use it all. Here is what she did with it. You will love it.
Ingredients -
2 Cups loose packed Thai basil leaves
3 large or 4 small cloves of garlic
1/4 Cup dry roasted or unsalted roasted peanuts
3 Tablespoons Sesame oil
1 1/2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon agave nectar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon lime juice
Easy on salt
Put all the dry ingredients in a food processor then add the wet ingredients and blend until smooth. Add a little more sesame oil if it seems too dry but go easy.
The flavor of this sauce is amazingly complex and is best suited with Asian inspired stir fried dishes. We added a couple spoonfuls of this to stir fried chicken, onions, peppers and Japanese eggplant in coconut milk over rice noodles. Bamm!
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