Basil Leaves

One of my husband's favourite herbs is basil (did you know mint is also a type of basil?) which we use a lot of at home. I traditionally like to buy the pot from Cold Storage since it means I have a bit more time and don't have to use the entire lot of basil leaves at one go.

Over the recent long weekend, we went crazy with the basil. We found some really good buffalo mozzarella cheese and made a caprese salad with a few tomatoes. It was wonderful especially after drizzling some extra virgin olive oil.

We still had some leaves left over, so I went out and bought some more to make pesto. The pine nuts were ridiculously expensive, at $10 for 100g from Cold Storage (if anyone knows of a cheaper source, please let me know). I used 3 boxes of basil from Cold Storage (@$2.95 each) with 100g pine nuts, which I roasted for 10 mins on 180 deg heat, and blended it with EVO before adding grated parmesan cheese and salt. It was very very very simple and delicious, especially with fresh pasta - we used spinach and ricotta tortellini.