We grow three four types of basil: Thai Basil, Purple Dark Opal Basil, Sweet Basil, and Genovese. The Thai Basil has a licorice or anise flavor to it. The other three all taste similar and are the Basil flavor most people are familiar with
HOW TO STORE: Closed plastic bag in the fridge (but not the coldest part of the fridge). Can stay fresh for a week like this. If you aren't going to get to it within that time, though, you can make a simple/quick pesto to freeze (see below) or dehydrate it by heating it at a really low temperature if you don't have a dehydrator.
HOW TO USE: Add, uncooked or cooked to anything you want a kick of flavor and a little extra nutrition. We often put it in pasta dishes and pizza. Brad previously waited tables at Bassett Street Brunch Club in Madison where a popular dish was a grilled cheese with large quantities of basil on it (note these are all really the same dish). Another "classic" way to prepare it is as part of a tomato, basil, mozarella salad like this.
We always try to grow a huge amount of Basil since we love it fresh, but really love having "pesto cubes"--basically we make a big batch of pesto and then put it in ice cube trays and freeze it. Once it is frozen we pop them out of the ice cube trays into freezer bags. Making pesto is pretty straight forward: here are the basics. We actually make it even simpler than that and have found there aren't really "rules" to this at all. Sometimes it is all basil, sometimes it is 1/3 basil, 2/3 Kale. Sometimes we add more garlic. We almost never add nuts to it. We usually don't add the cheese if we are going to freeze it and count on the dish we use it in over the winter having enough cheese to compensate.