Experiment with home-grown flavour with these easy and delicious herby recipes.
We have a tiny city garden but even though it’s so small it’s already bursting with edible goodies that the children are helping to grow. As our space is limited we have to choose what to grow very carefully and we’re finding our herb garden a great way to get maximum return for our efforts.
The plants are easy to grow and fill the garden with scent and, as we only need to add a handful to our cooking at a time to get great flavour, we can feel the great satisfaction of being self-sufficient.
One of our favourite herb recipes is pasta with pesto sauce. It’s part of our family’s staple diet and so easy to make, using basil from the garden and ingredients from the store cupboard. You can whizz up the meal in minutes.
Homemade pesto recipe
4 child-sized handfuls of basil leaves, freshly picked
1 handful of pinenut kernels
1 handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
A slug of olive oil
A squeeze of lemon juice
A little salt and pepper
We like to toast the pinenut kernels in a dry frying pan (no oil added) first to give extra flavour. Then we simply pop the pinenuts, basil, cheese and oil in a blender and whizz it all up. You can make the pesto with a pestle and mortar too if you don’t have a blender. Encourage the children’s confidence in the kitchen by letting them taste the result and deciding for themselves if the sauce needs tweaking with an extra slug of oil or squeeze of lemon.
Great ways to use home-grown herbs
My youngest daughter loves adding chives to recipes because she gets to snip them all with a pair of scissors. A pate of smoked mackerel, cream cheese and chives is super easy to make – just mix the three ingredients together well with a fork and then eat with bread or crackers.
Sage works perfectly in combination with sausages and you can wrap them up in puff pastry to make homemade sausage rolls to take on summer picnics.
Deb has a guide to creating your own pizza garden, or for something different you could try your hand at some lavender ice cream.
And after you’ve been busy cooking you could finish off your day fragrantly and add some herbs to your bath.
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admin
09 August, 2011
OOoo we love Pesto in our house and it is really getting pricey these days! This is a great recipe I can't wait to try it.
Leigh
Ready for Ten Team
mum
09 August, 2011
Leigh, pasta and pesto is the one thing I can guarantee the kids will eat even if they're not well.
10 August, 2011
I love the sound of this, am definitely trying this recipe out. Didn't realise it was so easy to make!