What's in the Garden for Supper?
Let the Garden Suggest the Menu.
Andrew Aasen
6/7/20263 min read
Is there something we're having that would benefit from fresh basil? Is a question that I love to ask. Letting what's available in the garden help narrow menu options is fun, but basil is extremely versatile. 9 out of 10 Aasen meals agree that almost everything is better with basil.
I enjoy growing inside and out, but I prefer to grow basil and leafy greens indoors. I have been experimenting with Prospera basil because of its heat tolerance.
My yard has tremendous slug and snail pressure, and even with copper tape around the base of the tower, I still get mollusks climbing up the cord, up the Camelia bushes or wooden railing, then onto the leaves of my kale and onto the tower. I am also surrounded by large fruitless mulberries, so I have slugs and snails rising from the ground to meet caterpillars rappelling from above.
Two weeks ago I went outside to find that 3 of the 5 basil plants I have out there had their stems rasped until they collapsed in moderate wind. I quickly harvested, washed, and made pizza sauce. Yes, there’s already basil in pizza sauce, but a little fresh basil takes it to another level.
Fast forward to Monday night this week. The surviving basil is bigger and ready for a cut-and-come-again harvest with just one spike of flower buds. My Mom picks me up from work, and I ask, “Would our supper tonight benefit from fresh basil?” We decided to do Mom’s Avocado Tomato Pasta Salad. So I harvest and prep the basil while she gets the water boiling and handles the fruit. The basil for this salad came from the harvest depicted above. I put four leaves in the garlic butter, and we tested our new air fryer's toast setting.
We have put basil in flannel hash, peanut sauce, turkey sandwiches, pizza 3 different ways, stir fry, cream sauces, lentil soup, and potato corn chowder. Below is a picture of a turkey sandwich with lettuce leaf basil, sweet potato leaves, and cranberry applesauce on sourdough.
Once, I had been sent to the back room to harvest lettuce leaf basil, and the menu shifted to pancakes in my absence. These tomato basil pancake sandwiches are the result.
When I give basil away, it goes into sandwiches, Thai curry, and marinated cheese. This one friend opened a bag of basil in her kitchen, and her boyfriend’s aunt came from two rooms away, exclaiming, “What kind of basil is that?” She was a chef, and she said, “I love this stuff; I’ll make this into tomato soup if you make the grilled cheese.
You really can do almost anything with basil, incorporate it into what you are having anyway, or let it steer the menu into something new. It might become a family favorite.
