Our Indian borage plants have been thriving and multiplying for almost a year now. Starting with just one cutting, they now occupy five entire pots on our windowsill.
In addition to having really pretty variegated leaves, they are also our primary sustainable crop. Once they get visibly bushy, The Wife harvest several stalks of leaves and adds them to cream and tomato pasta.
Unlike the baby bok choy that we tried farming last year, the Indian borage grows really fast. We’ve had occasions where there were too many leaves for us to consume and didn’t want to freeze the excess.
In terms of a cooking ingredient, they’re sort of like basil leaves. And one good way to processing a big bunch of basil leaves is to, of course, make pesto. It’s keeps well in the fridge and is very versatile.
So, for our recent harvests, The Wife adapted a homemade basil pesto recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and made several jars using our Indian borage. It was also a good way to use up our substantial stash of cashew nuts.
Among all the snackable nuts, I thought that cashews were soft enough, but our dentist advised that they’re not ideal for aging and increasingly fragile teeth. So I had to quit and went completely cold turkey, leaving a significant stockpile in our pantry.
Ingredients
- 200g fresh Indian borage leaves (rinse & pat dry)
- 100g cashew & pistachio nuts (toasted)
- 50g freshly grated or shredded parmesan cheese
- 5 cloves of garlic (fresh)
- 130ml olive oil (more if thinner consistency preferred)
- 3 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Pulse the leaves, nuts, cheese and garlic together in a food processor or blender.
- Scrape down the sides. Add the oil and lemon juice. Pulse until everything is blended together and relatively smooth.
- Add a drizzle of olive oil (or a splash of room-temp boiled water) to thin out. Add pepper and/or salt to taste.
- Pour into sterilised jars. Add a layer of olive oil on top to prevent browning.
- Keep in refrigerator for up to 1 week.
The recipe above results in five small jars, and can be tweaked to suit your particular preference e.g. more/less garlic, herbs etc.
Usage
The classic way to cook with pesto is, of course, to make pesto pasta. It’s ridiculously quick to make once you have jars of fresh pesto handy.
Another tried-and-true combination is to pair it with chicken for a quick and easy sandwich. We regularly buy a whole roasted chicken from Cold Storage supermarket, hand-shred the entire carcass and keep the meat in the fridge.
It’s also quite useful to incorporate it into cream soups, like The Wife’s favourite zucchini and onion cream soup. Mix in a generous blob and the pop of fresh herbal flavour adds another dimension to a simple and healthy soup.
For something slightly more exotic, use it to whip up a Korean-Italian fusion tteokbokki. Roast up some broccoli florets and mix them in for added crunch and a touch of smokiness.
I’m sure The Wife will come up with even more inventive ways to use the pesto, especially since we now have a regular and sustainable supply.
