Our neighbor Sissy has a green thumb and filled the yard with flowers and plants including strawberries, tomatoes, and basil. She always let us take as much basil as we pleased, which was awesome! When she moved she left us one of the basil plants to keep. I do not have a green thumb - I'm not sure what color thumb you have when plants die upon your sight, but that's what I have. I've been trying my hardest to water that little plant and keep it alive. I also bought an eggplant plant, which I water daily along with the basil, but have no snacks thus far!
I declared it 'Basil Week' a few weeks ago. (Our usual, boring, routine goes as such: chose recipes for the week, buy all ingredients at the store, try to use common ingredients so the fridge doesn't end up filled with old, unused, smelly food.) We chose 3 recipes all using basil.
Of course cave-man carnivore Bryce wanted a burger. So we made these Turkey Basil Pan Burgers. They were really flavorful and delicious! It's almost like a meatball since there are breadcrumbs, garlic, cheese, and of course basil, mixed into the burger. The basil adds a very fragrant, wonderful smell and taste. We had salad and oven "fries" with our Basil Burgers.
Basil week recipe #2: Shrimp Pizzas - shrimp, cheese, tomatoes, fresh basil, and onions MMMMM! They're supposed to be an appetizer, but we ate them with salad and called it dinner. There's no sauce but it was not missed.
Third and final basil recipe: standard Chicken Parmesan with pasta and... BASIL! I should have made more sauce, the recipe doesn't make much as you can tell. The chicken was cooked perfectly and so yummy :)
As long as I can keep the basil plant alive you'll be seeing more recipes with basil! Anybody have suggestions?
Try a pasta sauce that you don't cook. I made something up like that the other night and it was pretty good. In the food processor: tomaotos, onion, garlic, fresh basil, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. I kept it chunky, just as you would pico de gallo. Let it chill for a couple of hours and threw it over penne pasta with grated parmesan. We ate it cold...almost like a pasta salad. This recipe is far from perfect...I still have work to do on it. But, if you try it (or some version of it) let me know how it works out.
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That sounds delicious! I'll try it and let you know how it turns out :)
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