The End of Summer: The Last Pesto of the Season

By: Tom Freeland, HottyToddy.com, Blogger

I cut the rest of my basil tonight for the last pesto of the season.  My usual practice is to use the basil for pesto with dry purchased spaghetti– in the summer, pesto is one of my favorite go-to quick week-night dinners.  But for a couple of years, after seeing a really great video (which I cannot find online now) about a restaurant in San Francisco that serves pasta on house-made pasta cut in 3-4 inch squares (called fazzoletti, meaning handkerchiefs), pesto with home-made pasta has been on my list, and I decided to do it tonight.

The pasta was a cup and a half of flour, two eggs, and a bit of oil.  I made pesto from a three tablespoons of pine nuts (also the last of those), some garlic cloves, sea salt, pepper, a couple of cups of basil leaves, and a half cup of olive oil.  Those get thoroughly food processed and then I added a half cup of parmesan.   A dollop of the pasta cooking water melts the cheese, then it’s tossed with the (very briefly) cooked pasta, and topped with more cheese and some tomatoes, also from season’s end.   And another thing that’s running low:  my local garlic saved from early Summer.

Birthday dinner.

Read more blog posts by Tom Freeland at his NMissCommentor blog page.