Experiment in the Kitchen - Pesto

Tonight I have managed the seemingly impossible! After many months of longingly wishing to make home-made Pesto (and not getting off my ass to get the ingredients for it) I have gone forth and done so!
This is not as easy as it sounds - or, at least, it wasn't for me. The biggest set back? Acquiring fresh basil here in Ohio. In California, fresh herbs are in every supermarket. So I never thought about the potential difficulties in acquiring fresh herbs with which to cook with. I'd just go to the supermarket and pick some up, right?
Wrong! Apparently here in Ohio it is a monumental task to track down and purchase some fresh basil. Luckily, after calling a couple stores (and one abortive attempt to visit the grocery store we frequent) I found a store that carried some. I went there (in the pouring rain... wtf with the weather here?!?) and located their little plastic blister packs of fresh herbs. Wary because I couldn't view the contents easily, I got all the packs they had - 4 - in the hopes that between them there would be enough basil that wasn't bad which I could use to make the sauce.


Turns out this was a good move. Once I picked through and removed all the bits which had begun turning fuzzy for the bits which were still beautiful and green I had just enough to make the sauce (about 3 blister packs worth or so - as I had to toss approximately 1 full blister pack away). I put those, 1/4 c pine nuts, 5 cloves of garlic (diced) and maybe a cup and a half of olive oil into the blender (I say maybe on that last measurement as I just poured in oil until it seemed a good amount). I then ran the blender until I got a nice green puree.

A taste test revealed that there was something lacking - a certain sweetness that I had come to expect. I augmented with about a teaspoon of dried basil to try to bring that flavor to the forefront. This helped quite a bit.

I served the sauce on some 5 cheese rainbow tortellini. It was well received by the family, which is always the best test (the youngest seemed to particularly like it). I think that it would have been better had I had a better quality of basil. I am contemplating attempting to grow my own in a pot or something to aid me in the acquiring process. So, even though this batch was entirely edible, I still find it to be a Learning Experience in the necessity of getting good quality ingredients.