<p>Made my first ever batch of pesto with my bumper basil crop!</p>
<p>Now I need some SIMPLE ways to use it! </p>
<p>I know it’s great mixed in pasta, spread on sandwiches. </p>
<p>Can I freeze it? </p>
<p>Share if you’ve got simple ideas to share!</p>
<p>Oh, and HOLY COW the recipe I had called for pine nuts -which I used - at $24.99 a pound!!! Yikes! I bought only about 1/2 cup and made it do…I also saw a recipe (after I bought the pine nuts) for using walnuts instead…what is your preference???</p>
<p>Daughter LOVES to make paninis: Pesto, cooked chicken, mozzarella slices all on panini flatbread; she makes it like a grilled cheese sandwich…and sometimes adds tomatoes…</p>
<p>DW puts stuffs (hard stuff) extra basil into a ziplock sandwich bag and freezes for use in winter. Still taste fresh although a bit dehydrated which is what you want.</p>
<p>Pesto pizza is a favorite at our house. You can use homemade crusts, or those Boboli things. Use extra Parmesan cheese when you use it as a Pizza topping.
You can also add a spoonful of pesto to a bowl of vegetable/minestrone type soups.
I freeze it (small portions in ziploc bags) without the cheese (can’t remember why) and add the cheese when I use it later.
I like pinenuts better. I get them at Trader Joe’s. Maybe Costco has them cheaper than what you found?</p>
<p>also pesto cream sauce with gnocchi. Sauce is just basic pesto with a small amount of cream.</p>
<p>Costco sometimes does have them (much cheaper) but hasn’t the last few times I have looked. I use pecans instead.
I freeze it in ice-cube trays, then pop the frozen cubes out and put them into a zip-lock bag.</p>
<p>Great - I like the ice cube tray idea…except I already added the parmesean cheese when I blended the pesto - do you think it makes a difference???</p>
<p>I freeze it every year with the parmesan already added and it still tastes fine. (perhaps it’s a texture thing?) Also, I read once about pouring a thin layer of olive oil over the top of pesto before freezing to seal out air.</p>
<p>My favorite pesto dish—Steamed fresh green beans and quartered red potatoes tossed with fresh pesto. As a main dish or a side dish. I prefer pine nuts (a “cleaner” taste) and as mentioned before buy them in bulk at Costco. They freeze very well. I used toasted pine nuts in salads.
I know you are looking for “simple” recipes, but Mario Batali has a spectacular recipe for pesto, beschamel and asparagus lasagna.</p>
<p>There are several great chicken with pesto recipe on allrecipes. </p>
<p>I freeze the fully made pesto, but press it down into a thin block so I can break pieces off. I use sunbutter in pesto instead of pine nuts because I have a nut allergy in the family. </p>
<p>I also freeze basil blended with olive oil and use that in recipes throughout the winter. </p>
<p>I also use the pesto with tomatoes to make a modified version of bruchetta. This year my basil crop of three plants has produced enough basil to last a year! It’s still producing and my tomatoes are just beginning to ripen.</p>
<p>Use it on pizza instead of tomato-based sauce.</p>
<p>Two of my favorite pesto recipes:
<ol>
<li> Pasta. Boil 1 lb cavatappi pasta for 12 minutes. Drain and rinse. Heat 3/4 cup of pesto in same pan that you boiled the pasta in. After 1-2 minutes, add pasta. Remove from heat. Add finely diced fresh baby spinach, grape tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cut in cubes. I don’t measure these amounts. Add to your taste. Add some crushed red pepper flakes and garlic salt. Toss. This tastes good warm, at room temperate or cold. If you refrigerate overnight, add a little olive oil to freshen it up.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Lucky you with homemade pesto!</p>
<p>A topping for spaghetti squash. Yumm…</p>
<p>here’s more about pesto (pistou) in soup</p>
<p>[A</a> Thousand Soups: Soupe Au Pistou](<a href=“http://athousandsoups.blogspot.com/2009/03/soupe-au-pistou.html]A”>A Thousand Soups: Soupe Au Pistou)</p>
<p>We put it on top of salmon. We cook salmon steak or filet on the barbeque, skin side up first. Then we flip it over and spread pesto over the top. It is amazing.</p>
<p>I’ve used pine nuts for pesto, always, but I’ve never seen them at $24.99 a pound. Are you sure you didn’t buy organic??</p>
<p>[Taking</a> Pesto Beyond Pasta - Well Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Taking Pesto Beyond Pasta - The New York Times”>Taking Pesto Beyond Pasta - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Put on boiled new potatoes (or regular potatoes, in chunks.) Add some green onion or red onion. Wow.</p>
<p>One year I made it with cashews instead of pine nuts. Came out fine.</p>
<p>1 pound whole wheat pasta
1/2 cup pesto
1 cup grape tomatoes cut in half
1 cucumber peeled and cut into chunks
parmasean ceese</p>
<p>Cook pasta and cool. Mix in veggies and pesto. Top with cheese to taste.</p>