As you might remember, last year, we planted a large bed of basil. It was quite lovely, but there was really a lot of it.

This year, I decided to plant just a few small pots. (We still have pesto in the freezer from last year, and all of our neighbors have probably had their fill too.)

However, the bed from last year reseeded itself, and I am loathe to pull out healthy volunteers, so we now have a large amount of basil among our cantaloupes and lettuce. (At some point, all of my beds will be a mix of everything because of my reluctance to eliminate volunteers. For example, this year we have tomatoes in 3 or 4 different beds. This is a nice treat though.)

In the course of perusing food blogs this summer, I saw a recipe for basilcello. (If you haven’t tried limoncello, you should. It’s an Italian lemon liqueur, best served ice cold.) So naturally, I thought I’d give it a try. And I made it with lemon basil, which I love, hoping that lemon flavor would come through.

The results were fabulous. And you could taste the lemon flavor as much if not more than the basil. Here are a few pics of the process.

First you start with some vodka in a mason jar.

After washing the basil leaves, you par boil them, plunge them into an ice bath, and then add them to the vodka.

The basil then steeps in the vodka for a week. It gradually becomes green colored.

You then strain out the basil leaves, add some simple syrup (with relatively little sugar overall), chill the final beverage, and it’s ready to consume.

Cheers!