I love Italian cuisine. I love its rustic accessible preparation, presentation and use of fresh ingredients, Yes, FRESH ingredients.

Here’s the rub. Herbs. I love fresh herbs and I usually swear by them. A recipe isn’t the same – I’d preach to you!

Well, herbs are not cheap and they are so fragile. I always feel bad throwing away the little wilted green leaves of lovely basil.

This past week, I received my quarterly shipment from Styrker Wine Club. I knew I had a nice bottle of Speedy Creek Cabernet and I really wanted a bit more than chips and cheese dip to accompany it. Bruschetta Caprese immediately came to mind.

When I reached for the fresh basil, I winged a bit. I knew I wouldn’t finish a bottle of wine and all the tomatoes this evening. The basil leaves would be wilted in a few days. I looked at the tube of basil. I’d seen it before, I didn’t roll my eyes at it then, but I’d still bought the fresh basil.

This time  I thought, hmm, I wonder if the tube of basil would be all that bad. No, I use FRESH ingredients.  Put back the tube. Reach for the fresh basil leaves.

$1.99 for a small pack of leaves. $3.99 for a tube. Since I was using small round of bread and not making a sandwich, I wouldn’t be using the leaves that quickly. One leave per round wouldn’t go that far.

I reach for tube. I’ll last longer I “says” to myself.  Obviously, on a subconscious level, I wanted to check it out. So, I bought the Tube O’Basil.

Well, I’m here to say, it’s not bad. Skip reading the ingredients. It’s not going to say- Ingredients: Fresh Basil Only. There  are  preservatives involved- none that I couldn’t pronounce- so, how bad could they be? That is a rhetorical question.

I toasted small rounds of french bread, brushed with yummy olive oil, a squirt and shmeer of basil, a small bocconcini round, diced grape tomatoes with a dash of kosher salt, a twist of pepper and another drizzle of said, yummy olive oil.

I knew I could not tell anyone about this. You can keep a secret, can’t you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under all, cucina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.