Not a Foodie / Curry Basil Cream Sauce

This month, I'm attempting a new experiment: shopping for my entire month at once and freezing dishes made with highly perishable items for use later. One advantage to this is that I can go (kinda) hog-wild at the Farmer's Market, which is far enough of a drive for me that it's hard to go more than once a month.

For this trip, I tried to stick with seasonal veggies both because they last longer and because I was craving Fall produce. Two exceptions to this were my purchases of a boatload of delicious looking tomatoes and an especially fragrant bunch of fresh basil. Now, you might think this would result in your classic tomato-basil soup but that would be so boooring!  Bedides, with my daughter's love of a fresh tomato, I have a feeling we won't have a problem using the tomatoes before they go bad.

The basil, though...my aromatic impulse purchase...what to do with it? I considered making pesto - I do love a good pesto - until I ran across an old recipe I cut out from a magazine years ago and never had gotten around to trying: Basil Cream Sauce.

The base of the recipe is your basic béchamel sauce with a couple of cups (one large bunch should be just the right amount) of chopped, fresh basil. Because I love a good basil-enhanced curry, I decided to add a slight sprinkling of mild yellow curry powder to the mix as well.  

To make the constancy more like a gravy, I threw it all into a blender and pureed it until the basil was flake-size. 

Quick Tip: Make sure you let your sauce cool before putting it in the blender! Otherwise, you could end up with a big mess and/or a big burn!

All packaged up in a labeled baggie for freezing.  Quick Tip: Make sure to label your freezer bags with the date you made your sauce and lay the bag flat in the freezer to save as much space as possible in storage.

…and now I can't wait to use this to create an excellent light curry dish later in the month!