Balcony Garden: Harvest Monday #8

One thing I was really keen to grow on my balcony was basil as I hellbent on making my own pesto.  The first lot of basil didn't amount to much - just a few tiny shoots and that's it. Finally after a second attempt (and about 6 months) I had enough to make one jar (yes, one jar) of pesto.

I've been lucky enough to try Indira Naidoo's pesto - she's my balcony garden hero as you know - so I cracked open my copy of her book, The Edible Balcony and got to work. 

The recipe is actually really easy and that's saying something as I find cooking quite stressful and often get flustered when trying to follow a recipe.  That all said I probably should get myself a food processor that's slightly larger than a coffee cup as I ended up making a very VERY big mess.

I added a bit more garlic than called for and also threw in some rocket that I have growing which gave the pesto a nice peppery bite.  I found the smell of the basil quite overpowering - to be honest it made it feel a little ill. Someone suggested I try growing a Lemon Basil as the smell is less pungent, but the flavour still works really well in pesto. I also have some organic basil seeds waiting to be planted so we'll see how stinky they turn out to be.

And what did I use my hard won pesto for? My pesto pasta salad of course!

You can view more Harvest Monday posts on Daphne's Dandelions blog.