cocktails....

FataMorgana

Here is a link that might be useful: Basil drinks

Basil ice cream.....

FataMorgana

Here is a link that might be useful: Google - basil ice cream

Chop with fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and coarse salt (optionally thyme and parsley) and use as pasta dressing.

Make pesto and freeze it. It makes an excellent fast meal out of pasta and a salad.
Or you can add a bit to soups or chicken salad

PESTO SAUCE

2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons pine nuts

Whirl in a blender untiul evenly blended but you can still see bits of basil.

Pour into a bowl and stir in
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons romano cheese
3 tablespoons soft butter.

Will keep in the fridge for a week or
freeze in small containers. The basil will turn dark but the taste is the same. add a small amount of oil to the top of the containers either in the fridge or for freezing.

Serve over the pasta of your choice. Before spooning the pesto over your pasta add a tablespoon of the pasta cooking water to the pesto if it is too thick

Absolutely delicious

should have said whirl the garlic in the blender a bit first or you'll have big bits of garlic or do the rest and put it in the bowl and use a garlic press to do the garlic

Basil desserts...

FataMorgana

Here is a link that might be useful: Google - Basil desserts

when you get absolutely tired of basil recipes. Do what I do. Buy some of the ziplock vacuum bags, clean your basil, dry thoroughly. Bag it and suck all the air out. When you take it out and cook with it , you're unable to tell it from fresh. No ice or blackening.

Tomato basil soup?

You have stored a lot of pesto so far? How do you store it? In glass jars? Does it have to be in the fridge? Does it keep long?

I'd say tomato basil soup, definitely. I love soups. Great in winter.

Hey, you might want to look at this. I like the tomato and basil tart.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/search?keywords=basil&x=0amp;y=0

sell it to a local italian restaraunt or farmers market

Steep leaves in vinegar for flavored vinegar. Same for salad or olive oil. They both get a lovely color and will keep if you stopper the bottles well. I just spent the week in Cyprus, and every single home, classy or poor, had piles of it growing in pots, buckets, everywhere. I am basil-colored with envy, as I manage to kill it every year. Wormwood, mint, lemon verbena, sage, Syrian oregano, scented geranium, all going gangbusters. Lavender struggling but holding on. Tomatoes relatively happy. Our high heat (normal) and very high humidity (very unusual) has done in a number of annuals and even some perennials, but the compost is almost ready and we'll see if that doesn't give everything a boost. But the basil, well, maybe next year. Batya

I'm very jealous of your lemon basil - I love it but really struggle to grow it. If you have lots, stuff it inside a chicken before roasting (you can use stalks and older tatty leaves for this instead of the best bits) Smells fabulous whilst cooking and tastes lovely - if you like you could serve it with lemon basil pesto.

I have a bunch of cinnamon basil. Don't know what to use it for.

Thanks so much for all the responses! I laughed when I saw the basil ice cream and the cocktails. Who knows,it might be great. My wife has been putting it in fresh corn salad lately. Anyway, I just want to respond to a few posts. The pesto that we make we store in freezer bags. We also love to love to mix it with tomatoes, garlic, red onions and some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. We even make pesto pizza with fresh tomatoes from the garden and fresh mozzerella. We try to have pasta w/pesto every now and then. The thing we would love to try is putting the basil in Oils and Vinegar. It sounds delicious! That will probably be our next project. Yes I feel lucky to have the lemon basil. We have 4-5 of them. Love the smell and flavor. It does require a decent amount of work to pinch each leaf off its branch when making lemon basil pesto. Worth it though. We like to put the lemon pesto an fish or chicken meals. Really anything that you would put lemon on. Oh yeah.....my wife also keeps saying maybe we should sell it to markets or restaurants so that is definitely an option although I don't think we have THAT much. Nice idea. And we will try to store it in those air tight bags. That sounds like a great idea. You just keep it at room temperature? We also will check out those tomatoe and basil tarts. Sounds great. ven the basil soup sounds real good. Just wondering...........how does the butter make the pesto taste? Interesting. Thanks again you guys.

links -
You can use rosemary, garlic bulbs, even clover, for flavored vinegars, or raspberries.....oils too. Google making flavored vinegars or herb-infused vinegars/oils, and you'll find a lot. (Oddly enough perhaps, Martha Stewart has lots of these things!)In small bottles that you can get cheaply, give them for gifts, and they look pretty with all their different colors on a shelf (not a windowsill as the sunlight will make them unhappy).
If I could grow basil like you, I would be less unhappy myself, but there you have it......Peace, Batya

i've made basil lemonade before...its good