Val’s way with brilliant basil

A hottie herb used to make pesto has become a household favourite. Valerie O’Connor offers mouth-watering tips on how to grow this taste-osterone fuelled Italian.

asil is the delicious and fragrant delicate herb that we just can’t get enough of since pesto exploded into our lives back in the nineties.

Since then it’s been pasta with pesto, salmon with pesto, pesto bake, bacon with pesto, pesto with pesto. Pesto, for a while was a bit of a pest. It’s easy to buy nice pesto anywhere these days, though many are made with less than best ingredients. Of course the famous pesto Liguria, from Italy uses carefully handpicked basil from well cared-for plants.