I've been told that when it gets cold enough, basil just up and dies. I'm not really sure what is considered to be cold enough, but it's been dropping in temperature and I didn't want to lose all the basil we had without some plan in mind.
I cut down the whole basil plant so that there were only a few branches, perhaps five inches tall, left. If it grows back, at least it will be bushy. And if it doesn't, I won't feel like we lost a lot.
From all this basil, I made a good-sized batch of pesto that I transferred to freezer bags in four batches. When we watch pesto in the coming weeks, I'll defrost it, add cheese, and hopefully, all will be good.
As I mentioned a couple months ago, we went to the E 48th Street Market and stocked up on some Italian pantry goods including a tin of salted anchovies. We hadn't had the opportunity to break into the new stuff yet because I still had leftover anchovies in oil and capers in brine. We still have more of the capers, so we haven't broken into the salted capers, but I had the opportunity to open the anchovies.
When I opened the tin, it looked like this. I took one of them out. It was a whole anchovy, scales and all.
I washed it under a thin stream of water to get all the scales off, then I opened it up and took the backbone out. They look good. And it was amazing, but I think I could taste the difference in my salsa verde.
As for the rest of the anchovies, I took them out and put them into a plastic container with lots of salt between each layer. That seemed better than keeping them in the tin.
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