fresh basil Archives - Popcorn and Pandas

Our garden has been a hit this year! Especially for fresh, homemade pasta sauces. This was my first venture at making my own pesto sauce, and I have to say, it turned out pretty darn good! Not to mention, it was super easy to make. Thanks Mom!

What you need:

2 cups fresh basil leaves

3 or 4 garlic cloves

olive oil – I don’t really measure…enough so that the mixture ends up like a sauce and not chunky

1/4 pine nuts

1/2 cup Romano cheese

blender or food processor

1/2 cup heavy cream (if you want to make pesto cream sauce)

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How to make it happen:

Put about half of the basil leaves in a blender or food processor with the olive oil to grind up. Once it’s smooth, add the other ingredients (except the cream) and remaining basil and olive oil to grind up. Make sure it is all well blended and smooth.

You can either freeze or use fresh.

Transfer the sauce to a small pot to heat it up. If you want to make pesto cream sauce, you can whisk in the heavy cream right before turning off the heat.

Boil up your favorite type of pasta, and top it with this delicious sauce! Once the pasta is boiled, I drain it and then coat it with a layer of the sauce so that it doesn’t dry out and stick together. Serve it up in bowls, and then top with as much added sauce as you like. I also add some extra grated Romano cheese to the top, because I’m a cheese fanatic.

Delish!

Hope you enjoy, and would love to hear if any of you try this recipe out.

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Happy Monday. Have a great week everyone!

XO,

Gina

It’s that time of the year! The time when our tomatoes are coming up in the garden, and more importantly…time for fresh pasta sauce! I typically make my own homemade sauce (carrying on the family tradition) all year long using cans of tomatoes, but there is something about those fresh tomatoes that really make the world go ’round. I have tried both all fresh and all canned versions of this recipe, but my preference is actually a 50/50 method of half fresh, half canned. For some reason, that packs the best punch of flavor in my book, and it’s just the perfect combo for an amazing sauce.

The recipe is quite simple. Most of it is all about taste and preference. I hardly measure anything, and I kind of pinch and throw in as I go.

What you need:

4-6 cloves of garlic chopped (or whole, but I chop mine)

chopped yellow onion (or white or spanish) – I use about 1/4 of a medium size onion

extra virgin olive oil

fresh tomatoes from the garden (I used about 12)

canned tomatoes (my favorite brand is the Sclafani crushed, I used 1 can for this batch, because that was about how many fresh tomatoes I had, and I wanted it to be a 50/50 mix)

fresh basil from the garden to taste (I used about 10 leaves)

salt

pepper

dried italian herbs (if you have more fresh, the better!)

sugar (my secret ingredient)

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How to Make it Happen:

First prep the fresh tomatoes by dicing them up to remove all the seeds (the more seeds you have the more bitter the sauce is, so I remove them all from the fresh tomatoes). Then, you can either put them in a food processor to blend or keep them as is (again your preference of texture!) and put them aside.

Saute the garlic and onions in the olive oil in a large pot on medium heat for a couple minutes or until the onions are translucent.

Add the fresh tomatoes and the can of tomatoes to the pot and stir, stir, stir. Lower heat so it’s not popping bubbles of sauce all over the kitchen.

Next, stir in the basil, salt, pepper, extra Italian herbs, and sugar to taste.

Let it sit, stirring frequently, and tasting frequently. You may find you want to add a few herbs, a little more sugar, etc. as it cooks. You can really cook it as long as you want. The flavors will change a bit as time wears on, and you may want to add more to it. I am all about the quickness, so unless I have a very large pot of sauce, I don’t really cook mine for more than 20-30 minutes. I am usually just cooking for two, so it can cook pretty quickly.

Boil up your favorite type of pasta while you are waiting for the sauce. Once the pasta is ready, drain it, and coat it with a few large scoops of sauce so that it doesn’t dry out and stick together. Serve it up in bowls, and add as much extra sauce as you like! I top mine with grated Locatelli Romano cheese as well, and voila! Dinner is served.

Buon Apetito!

XO,

Gina

Tag: fresh basil

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