Dr. Meg McGrath is an Associate Professor Emeritus from Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and is the Chair of our Externally Advisory board.
Pesto is Meg McGrath’s favorite way to use basil.
The recipe she uses is in The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen published in 1974. A food processor is used to make the pesto. It is frozen for future use by placing single-use quantities (approximately ¾ cup) in sandwich bags, twisting the bags shut, then placing them in a quart-sized ziplock bag.
Pesto is used:
- as pizza base with fresh basil put on top of vegetables and cheese after cooking. She makes a whole wheat pizza crust. To obtain a slightly crisp crust, after rolling out the crust and putting on the pizza pan, it goes on the lower shelf of a slightly warmed oven, allowed to rise for about 30 minutes, then the oven is turned on (500 F). The pan is removed after about 14 minutes when the crust is starting to turn brown. Pesto (thawed) is spread in a thin layer over the whole crust.
Vegetables are placed on top. Two favorite options are:
- Tomatoes. 1) fresh, thinly sliced plum-type tomatoes (primarily used in summer) or 2) campari-type tomatoes that were cut in half and roasted in the oven, then frozen (winter).
- Eggplant and tomatoes. First a layer of fried eggplant pieces is placed on the pesto layer. Next it is covered with fresh, diced plum-type tomatoes.
The vegetables are covered with shredded mozzarella cheese (tomato pizza) or mozzarella cheese balls (eggplant), then light layer of Parmesan cheese.
Pizza is put in the oven until the cheese melts. Then lightly covered with chopped basil.
- with pasta. Thawed pesto is stirred well with pasta. It is served topped with toasted pine nuts (heated in a fry pan until they start to turn brown), dried tomatoes (warmed and moistened by heating in a fry pan with some olive oil), and Parmesan cheese. Cherry and grape tomatoes are cut in half, dried to almost fully dry in a vegetable/fruit drier, then stored refrigerated in pintsized ziplock bags.
On a trip to Budapest in 2023 Meg encountered basil in the wild!
“First image attached is New York chocolate cake served at the New York Café, Budapest, Hungary. Second has a dried basil leaf on avocado-cucumber sorbet served at Borkonyha Winekitchen, Budapest, Hungary.”
– Meg
