This week we received the annual fall shipment of fish from the Alaskan fishing boat.  We got 25 lbs of fresh caught salmon and 20 lbs of halibut.  Good stuff!  Our freezer is officially full for the long cold winter.

The organic CSA we get our veggies from during the summer also offered up extra basil this week for $3 a bunch.  I was figuring the bunches would be much smaller.  I got 4 huge bunches of basil yesterday (about a 1/2 bushel), so last night I made up four batches of pesto.  Pesto can be spendy in the store, but it is so easy to make.  Basil during the winter lasts about a day in my fridge and it costs a lot, too.  I was so happy to find out you can freeze pesto!  I just sprayed my big muffin tins with oil (makes it easier to pop them out), filled them up with pesto, froze them, popped them out and then put them in freezer bags and back in the deep freeze they went.

Pesto is basically about 4 cups of basil leaves, a 1/2 cup of parmesan, a 1/2 cup of nuts (usually made with pine nuts, but I’ve made it with walnuts and pecans), a few cloves of garlic, a bit of salt and pepper and then olive oil.  Just pulse the leaves, cheese, nuts, garlic and s & p together in a food processor until they are chopped up good, then drizzle the olive oil in until you get the right consistency.  You can adjust to add more cheese or more nuts to taste.  It really is pretty easy to make.

I used some of my pesto last night on this salmon I made on the grill.  I put the salmon in a aluminum foil packet with the pesto on top and baked it on the grill (off the direct heat) for about 15-20 minutes.  I served it with cabbage sauteed with olive oil, butter and balsamic vinegar and some cheesy breadsticks I baked in the grill on the top rack while the salmon was cooking.

Salmon goes best with a Pinot Noir, too.  The kids actually ate the “green stuff” on the salmon.  The cabbage…notsomuch.  They were all about the breadsticks.