The final taste of summer was the basil paste I took from the freezer. Once it defrosted, I was eating big spoonfulls of dark green sunshine.
It’s the fresh basil I harvested last October and Turkish olive oil made into paste in the Cuisine Art/blender. I never make pesto and freeze it because I want my garlic, pine nuts, and other pesto ingredients fresh when I’m ready to eat it. Instead I spin basil and olive oil into a paste and freeze freezer-bags of it, laying the bags flat on the bottom of the freezer so I can trim off as much as I want once its frozen. (A trick my friend Jack Spicer taught me. I do the same for sorrel so I always have sorrel pesto for fish.) Or you might put the basil paste in ice cubes trays for later.
After defrosting the basil paste, I add fresh garlic (also the last of the season), more oil perhaps, pine nuts, etc., combining the paste with fresh ingredients to make my pesto sauce. Yum.